


Road and Sky Align

by wallmakerrelict



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Age Difference, Amputation, Anal Sex, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Body Dysmorphia, Car Accidents, Frottage, Gun Violence, Hurt/Comfort, Looper AU, M/M, Multi, Mutual Pining, Oral Sex, POV Alternating, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Selfcest, Threesome - M/M/M, Time Travel, Vehicles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-15
Updated: 2019-12-15
Packaged: 2021-02-24 16:34:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 52,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21801031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wallmakerrelict/pseuds/wallmakerrelict
Summary: Time travel has not yet been invented. But thirty years from now, it will have been. It will be instantly outlawed, used only in secret by the largest criminal organizations when they need to make someone disappear. Future tagging and tracking systems will make it almost impossible to carry out a murder or dispose of a body in secret, so they will send their enemies back in time, into the waiting sights of specialized assassins called loopers.Keith is one such looper, under contract to the Syndicate which runs the fallen city of Seattle. He’s accepted his role within their murderous ranks. Until they send him someone he can’t kill: Shiro. Keith’s best friend, but thirty years older and with all the scars of a lifetime spent in a failed fight against the Syndicate.Now Keith and both Shiros must work together to escape the wrath of the Syndicate in his present, and to somehow prevent the terrible future that has locked Shiro in a deadly thirty-year loop.
Relationships: Allura/Pidge | Katie Holt, Keith/Shiro (Voltron)
Comments: 38
Kudos: 63
Collections: Sheith Big Bang 2019





	1. Oh, Angela! It's a long time coming

**Author's Note:**

> Art in chapters 1 and 4 by [Hazel](https://twitter.com/hazeleks), if you like them please click on the images to go to her twitter and give her some love!

[ ](https://twitter.com/hazeleks/status/1206264521603637248?s=20)

The sky was a magnifying glass, turning sunbeams toward the earth as if determined to set the West Coast on fire.

The weather had calmed down a bit since the truly deadly temperatures of July and August, and the streets were busier as more and more people braved the heat. But the clouds and rain Seattle used to be known for were nowhere in sight, having been pushed deeper into autumn each year by the same warming climate that had sunk the old waterfront into Puget Sound. The early September sun was relentlessly hot, beating down on the city as if it meant to burn out the last remnants of humanity that crawled through the ruined streets. Glass glowed, metal seared, and asphalt sucked at the shoes of anyone forced outdoors.

Shiro kept himself cool by pushing his slat bike’s throttle well beyond a responsible speed, weaving between cars and whipping up a wind out of the still, muggy air to blow through the vents in his bike leathers. The city flashed by him in streaks of broken glass, crumbling facades, and colorful graffiti. Derelict vehicles clogged the road’s edges and spilled into the lanes where wary-eyed vagrants camped in their shade. To the north, Shiro could see the broken spire of the Space Needle, decapitated by vandals’ bombs over a decade ago. It always made him smile. CEOs and corrupt politicians had done a better job of taking care of their skyscrapers than they did their people. At least that single scar on the skyline was honest about the human suffering taking place beneath its shadow.

None of the big west coast cities had fared particularly well over the last thirty or so years. Portland had quickly been carved into gang territories and San Francisco was steadily being swallowed up by the Pacific, but at least they were lucky enough not to have the Syndicate on their doorsteps. As he moved through Seattle, Shiro spotted a group of the Witch’s enforcers - elite druids unmistakable in their long, black coats with gats holstered on their hips.

He slowed down so the roar of his engine wouldn’t attract the roadside huddle’s attention, and braked even harder as he drew level with them. Their backs stayed to the street, their faces turned toward an elderly man stooped against the paint-streaked concrete wall. He looked painfully like Shiro’s father had, right down to the age-wrecked body hidden under filthy layers of clothes and the proud, defiant flash of his eyes.

Shiro couldn’t hear what they were saying, but as he neared he noticed cruel laughter break out among the druids. The old man, his face furrowed and red with humiliation, tried to shoulder through the line of younger men hemming him in. One of the druids grabbed him by the coat and yanked him back toward the wall. When the old man refused to surrender, wriggling and trying to shuck his coat to escape, the laughter stopped. The druids tensed, and Shiro saw a hand touch a holster.

“Grandpa!” Shiro called out, his bike whining as he pulled it to a sudden stop. He hoped the old man had the common sense to play along. “I thought I was supposed to pick you up at the other end of the street! What are you doing all the way down here?”

“Who the hell are you?” said the old man.

Damn. That was just Shiro’s luck. One of the druids smiled wickedly and said, “Sounds like this is none of your business.”

“It’s anyone’s business when you harass people on the street. Why don’t you pick on somebody who can defend themselves?”

The druids turned away from the old man, all interested in Shiro now. “I suppose you think that’s you,” one said, unclipping her holster.

This was stupid. Shiro was outnumbered and unarmed. Even if he’d had a chance of winning this fight, one pack of druids was just the tip of the iceberg when it came to Haggar’s Syndicate. Retreat was the only option. “Come on, gramps, hop on!” he pleaded.

While the druids were distracted, the old man had managed to worm his way through their ranks and edge closer to the bike. Now he sized Shiro up, clearly noticing the untorn clothes and clean hair that set him apart from most others on the street, not to mention the customized slat bike he was straddling. His eyes scanned Shiro’s face, his neck, the breast of his leather jacket, his belt - no gang tattoos or jewelry, no insignia, no gat.

“Yeah, sure,” he muttered as he climbed aboard.

As soon as the old man was settled in behind him, Shiro revved the engine and took off before the druids could decide what to do, watching them in his mirror as he went. One or two took a step after him, as if they were thinking about giving chase. But then he was too far away, and they shrugged as they let him go.

“You okay there?” Shiro shouted over the engine as he turned the corner, swerving out of sight of the druids. “Where can I drop you off?”

“I don’t have any money,” the man grunted, holding tight to the sides of Shiro’s jacket.

Shiro sighed. “I don’t want your money. You just looked like you needed help getting out of there.”

The man huffed a humorless laugh. “I don’t need help from anybody. Let me off of this thing!”

“Fine,” Shiro muttered as he pulled the bike to a stop just a few blocks away from where he’d picked the man up. At least it was far enough away the druids wouldn’t find him again, if he was careful. The man’s hands slid over Shiro’s coat and off his hips as he rolled awkwardly off the bike, stumbling before finding his feet and walking away.

It wasn’t as if Shiro needed recognition for what he’d done. He was just trying to show a little humanity in a world that didn’t seem to value it anymore, and that was its own reward.

A “thank you” wouldn’t have hurt, though.

He weaved down the street, slower this time, until he spotted the peeling window decals of a bar whose style was retro a couple times over - a bygone seventies vibe by way of aughts nostalgia, crammed into a building that couldn’t have been built before 2030 but looked much older, all of it filtered through the neighborhood’s general poverty and listlessness. His phone confirmed the address, but he already knew he was in the right place by the red-paneled bike outside. He parked beside it and left the two slats nestled side by side under the awning.

The inside of the bar was dusty, and about half the lights were either flickering or broken. The AC worked, though, and Shiro unzipped his jacket to let the cold air chill the sweat off his chest. With only the bartender and a couple of drunks in the corner, it was easy for Shiro to pick out the person he’d come here to see.

He had his back to the door as he poked at the jukebox up against the wall. Legs a mile long, wrapped in skintight denim. White stripes on his red leather jacket broadening his frame. Shaggy black hair braided over his shoulder and falling in his face as he hunched over the machine, guarded as ever even as he left his back wide open. Wary with his heart; reckless with his body.

“Hey, Keith,” said Shiro, placing a gentle hand on his back as he passed him on the way to grab a seat.

Keith glanced over his shoulder, concentration melting around a brief smile. “One sec,” he muttered as he finished keying in his music. When the sound of an old-timey electric guitar filled the room, he joined Shiro at the bar.

He looked good. Keith always looked good - his face was gorgeous enough to stop Shiro in his tracks every time, his hair was a perfect mess, and the way his body folded up as he perched on the barstool and leaned on his elbows made him look like a crouching cat, wiry and alert and beautiful. But Shiro did more than admire. He looked for cuts and bruises (none visible) and at the whites of his eyes (clear). So Keith probably wasn’t getting in the middle of any violent disputes, and he wasn’t on drops. Good. He was staying safer than most of his cohorts, then, as safe as loopers could get.

The looper contract was simple on its face: be at a certain place at a certain time, point your blunderbuss in a certain direction, and clean up after. But the Syndicate always managed to take more from its people than what they’d signed away. Addiction, isolation, and loyalty to the Witch’s hierarchy kept the loopers under her thrall long after their contracts should have been over.

Shiro resented the Syndicate for every inch of Keith they’d managed to steal. All he could do now was cling ferociously to what was left within his reach.

“Can I buy you a drink?” said Keith, interrupting Shiro’s staring.

“Let me get the first round,” said Shiro. “Just like old times.”

Keith gave him a lopsided smile. “In old times, you bought for me because I couldn’t afford it. I can take care of myself now.” Then, looking closer at Shiro and narrowing his eyes, he added, “What’s wrong?”

Shiro was patting down every pocket in his coat and pants, turning them inside out as he became more and more distressed. Finally, acceptance made him calm. “I guess I’ll take you up on that drink after all. My wallet’s gone. Old man must have lifted it when he got off the bike.”

“You picking up hitchhikers again?” said Keith, his tone gentle and teasing. “I told you to knock that off. It only ever worked out for you once.”

Shiro snorted. “You weren’t a hitchhiker; you were just some street urchin who stole my bike. And look at you now!”

“Yeah, look at me now,” Keith muttered ruefully, and turned away to flag down the bartender. He paid for their drinks with crisp bills peeled off a banded roll - the kind the Syndicate traded for silver and gold. When he caught Shiro staring, he stuffed the money back in his pocket and quickly redirected. “So, who nabbed your wallet? You’ve lived in town all your life. I thought you were sharp enough not to fall for pickpockets.”

“I was off my guard,” Shiro admitted. “He was getting hassled by some druids, and it looked like it might turn ugly. I offered him a ride.”

Keith had his beer to his lips, and he stopped mid-swallow as he read between the lines of Shiro’s story. Coughing, he rasped, “What were you thinking, picking a fight with the Syndicate?” This wasn’t gentle teasing anymore. Keith looked scared.

”No fighting! I barely even talked to them.”

“Shiro…” said Keith, gripping the edge of the counter. “Do you think because you know me, you know how the Syndicate operates? The druids are dangerous. They’re armed, bored, and they don’t answer to anybody except Haggar. You don’t want them to notice you. Not ever, not for any reason!”

Shiro put a hand on Keith’s arm. “It’ll be fine. They don’t know who I am.”

“The logo for your shop is on the side of your bike!” Keith shouted.

“If being on the Syndicate’s radar is so dangerous, then why aren’t you more worried about yourself?”

The electric guitar faded out with a final strained riff, and the machine clunked its way to the next song Keith had queued up - a ballad with a cadence more upbeat than its mournful lyrics. They sat in silence, each stewing in frustration but neither wanting to escalate the argument any further, instead listening to the nasal recording make its way through the first verse. Only when the chorus began harmonizing about “lyin’ eyes” did Shiro speak again.

“Let’s not talk about the Syndicate.”

“Agreed,” said Keith with an audible sigh of relief. “How’s work?”

Shiro replied, “I can’t complain,” but Keith waited patiently until he complained anyway. “Business is getting scarcer. No one has any money, so when it’s time to choose whether to keep their car running or put food on the table, they let the car rust. The caravans will barter sometimes, which helps, but it doesn’t pay rent. I’m only still afloat because every once in a while, a rich kid crashes his slat bike and needs me to put it back together.”

“You’re too kind. You don’t charge what you should,” said Keith.

“People can’t pay.”

“If you can’t afford your rent, how are you ever going to get that plane running?”

At that, Shiro smiled. A few years ago he’d come by the wreckage of a little four-seat Cessna. He’d gotten it for cheap, because at the time it hadn’t been a plane so much as the skeleton of a fuselage with a few broken components rattling around inside it. His friends thought he was delusional for pouring his time and money into it, trying to rebuild it. Only Keith had lit up when he’d first seen it. He’d immediately recognized what Shiro saw in it - the promise of freedom. The opportunity to rise out of these crime-soaked streets and look for something better.

Over the years Shiro had scrounged the missing parts and repaired the broken ones. The plane wasn’t a Cessna anymore; it was a Frankenstein’s monster of single-engine aircrafts, so jumbled and mismatched that at times even Shiro had wondered if it would ever fly. But today, he had news for Keith.

“It runs,” he said nonchalantly, grinning into his glass as he took a sip and waited for Keith’s reaction.

Keith didn’t disappoint. “It runs?! Since when?” Excitement made his voice so loud, the drunks in the corner paused their conversation and gave him a dirty look, but he didn’t notice. Keith was beaming at Shiro. His smile only flagged the tiniest bit when he said, “You took it up without me?”

“Not yet,” said Shiro. “I started the engine a few times, but I wanted to tell you before I took it for a test flight.”

“Shiro, you know just because the engine works doesn’t mean your homemade airplane will fly, right?”

“I know, I know. But I’ve done the math. Re-checked every measurement until my eyes bled. It’ll fly, I’m sure of it.”

Keith grabbed Shiro’s wrist excitedly. “Promise me you’ll take me along when you fly it for the first time?”

Shiro couldn’t help but tease, “You’d have to come by the shop for that, instead of waiting for me to track you down at some bar across town.”

“Things have been… It’s been hard to…” Keith let his excuses trail off and relented with a sigh. “Yeah, okay. I’ll visit more often.”

“How are you?” The question came out more cautious than curious. Shiro didn’t want to know about Keith’s work, and Keith knew that. It was a delicate dance to keep up with Keith’s life while staying ignorant of the company he kept and the things he had done.

Keith smiled wistfully and reached across to clink his bottle against Shiro’s glass. “Doing pretty good right now.”

They talked about the past, mostly, because the present was painful and there was no point in speculating about a nebulous future. So they told and re-told old stories about the trouble Keith used to get up to as a teenager, about Shiro’s parents, about the Seattle they’d grown up in. The city had seemed so bleak back then, but hindsight made it look almost rosy.

The longer they talked, the deeper they fell back into comfortable habits. It never seemed to matter how long they’d been apart. Their connection had been instantaneous, even all those years ago when they’d first met, and since then it had only grown stronger. Not time, nor distance, nor their diverging lives could break that. All the ugliness and uncertainty of the world seemed to fade and dim when Keith was nearby, leaving only one thing in focus: the boy Shiro had admired for years, who he cherished above all else. Who he hadn’t yet been able to save from the city which was trying to devour all his goodness and light.

The songs on the jukebox marked time. Five of them slid by easily, and when the music fell silent Keith fed the machine again and queued up some more. The sunspots lancing through the windows dimmed and lengthened. Shiro wished he could freeze time here, bathing in the conditioned air and Keith’s eyes and the lyrical syrup of those rock oldies.

When the jukebox fell quiet again, before Keith had a chance to turn it back on, one of the men in the corner staggered over and waved his credit chip over the reader. Some tinny, beatless noise - the kind that had been popular for a second or two in the 2020s - began rattling the bar.

Keith tried to finish what he’d been saying, but his eyes kept flicking to the jukebox in annoyance. Finally he sighed, reached out his hand, and flexed it, gripping the air as if holding and tugging at something Shiro couldn’t see. The inner workings of the jukebox clunked heavily, and the music sputtered and died. It started up again a second later, this time with a twangy female voice singing about the lights in Georgia going out. The men in the corner were too drunk to notice. The bartender narrowed her eyes at the jukebox for a moment before shrugging and going back to cleaning glasses. Keith shook his hand out and turned back to Shiro as if nothing had happened.

“You’ve been practicing,” said Shiro.

Telekinesis was nothing new. Plenty of people had it now, though by adulthood most TKs had worn out its novelty and preferred not to call attention to it. No point in announcing the ability when one person out of every ten has it, and the best any of them can do is lift a few grams with their mind. It took a particular kind of immature show-off to think anyone was impressed by it anymore, though just last week a customer had tried to flirt with Shiro by hovering a quarter an inch off the surface of his palm, a vein bulging in his forehead from the effort.

But Keith was different. He’d always been different. After Shiro had caught him joyriding on the stolen slat bike, the pedals almost too low for his skinny legs to reach, he’d invited the wild-eyed teenager back to the shop. Plenty of other things for him to steal there, but Keith had kept his hands to himself. He’d jammed them in his pockets, perhaps wanting to avoid even the accusation of betraying the man who’d declined to call the cops or the druids on him. So starved for kindness that he’d repay any scrap of it a thousandfold. So Shiro had already become intrigued even before he’d gotten the shock of his life: on his back, under a car, he’d called out to Keith for a screwdriver only to find exactly the tool he was looking for floating by his head. When he’d pressed Keith for how he’d gotten so good at TK, he was met only with a shrug and a satisfied smile.

Back then, when other kids were just learning to make dimes lazily twitch and turn over, Keith was walking around orbited by a halo of spare change. As he’d grown older, he’d only gotten stronger. Soon he was pulling books off the high shelves (and continued to do so even after he’d hit his growth spurt and could have reached them in the normal way if he’d wanted to), and twirling a dagger around his fingers in ways gravity and momentum should not have allowed.

One night, five or six years ago, Shiro had watched Keith use TK to pluck a bottle of beer from the hand of the brown-skinned boy Keith had been shyly eyeing. Keith was nineteen then, and had come a long way from the standoffish urchin streaked with dirt and engine grease Shiro had first met. The other boy had been so enthusiastically impressed, Keith had sheepishly given him his beer back and they’d talked all night. That was the first time Shiro had felt a twinge of something like jealousy, and he’d been unable to decide if it was because Keith was sharing his TK with someone else, or his attention. It was hard to be upset about it though. Even if Keith would never look at Shiro that way, it had been good to watch his walls come down over the years. To watch him be happy.

Keith’s TK was joyful, boundless, and seemingly effortless. He’d brought to mind the word people used to use for TK, before reality and cynicism had sucked all the wonder out of it: magic.

But then he’d joined the Syndicate, his walls had gone back up, and he’d stopped using TK openly. Now, fiddling with the jukebox, was the first time Shiro had seen him do it in months. The change was stark. Of course Keith was talented, but this was something else - precision enough to affect the inside of a machine, and range enough to do it from across the room. Shiro had never seen anything like it.

Keith flexed his hand again, not doing anything supernatural this time. Just watching the joints bend. “I haven’t,” he said. “Been practicing, I mean. Not on purpose. I just do it sometimes. It’s useful.”

“Not for most people,” Shiro pointed out. “There’s not much use in floating coins and scraps of paper. For everyone else, it’s a parlor trick. For you… it’s a gift.”

Keith glowed, and Shiro almost let himself stop there before he went and ruined it.

“You could have done something with that.”

With a surprised blink, the light Shiro’s praise had kindled in Keith’s eyes was gone. “You mean instead of looping?” Keith said bitterly. “You think I’d be better off doing magic tricks on a street corner?”

“You had more options than that.” It was an old fight, one they’d had many times, but Shiro couldn’t help fighting it. Keith had signed his life over to the Syndicate without so much as talking to Shiro first. That stung, and it had never stopped stinging.

“You ever been homeless?” Keith snapped. “You ever have to steal to eat? Then you don’t know what my options were.”

“I could have helped you, if you’d let me.”

At that, all the fight went out of Keith in the gust of a sigh. “I know you think that,” he said. “But there’s nothing you could have done to change this. I’m just different from you.”

“What are you talking about?”

“See, most people live their lives in a straight line. Like you. You’re going somewhere.” Keith held up his finger in front of his chest and slowly pointed it out away from him until his arm was fully extended, and he flicked his hand to indicate the line continuing on its trajectory into the distance. “You were always going to get out of this town.”

Shiro tried to protest, but Keith was still talking.

“People like me live life in a circle.” With his other hand, he drew a circle in the air, starting and stopping in front of his own face. “We’re born, and we spin around in place for a while, and then we die. I’ve seen it dozens of times. All the kids who grew up on the street with me - they’re all dead now, starved or run down by caravans or shot up by gats. And the ones who aren’t dead are looping. The same cycles over and over again. I was always going to die here. Closing my loop will just make it official.”

Closing his loop. He said it so casually, but it sent a shiver up Shiro’s spine. That was the Syndicate’s term for the tidy way they wrapped up their loopers’ contracts. There could be no record of the Syndicate’s time travel crimes. So, thirty years or so from now, the list of people to be “disappeared” would include every looper who had ever worked for the Syndicate. That was how a looper knew his contract was over - when he saw his own face at the other end of his blunderbuss. Pull the trigger. Take the payout. Be free.

Or as free as he could ever be, with the shadow of his fate hanging over him.

“No matter where I go or what I do,” Keith muttered into his beer, “I’m going to end up back here.”

Shiro fought back a grimace. “And you’re okay with that?”

“I have to be,” said Keith with a shrug, downing the rest of his beer in two gulps.

Shiro could tell when Keith was winding himself up to leave. Their visits were always too short. Maybe that’s why Shiro blurted out, “It doesn’t have to be like this,” even though he knew talking about the impossibility of breaking his contract always made Keith defensive.

But instead of getting angry, Keith just smiled wistfully, cocking his head as he studied Shiro’s eyes. “You gonna sweep me off my feet and take me away from all this?”

“Sounds nice when you say it like that.” Shiro reached over and placed his hand gently on top of Keith’s.

The brief flirtation had drawn a sparkle to Keith’s face, but as soon as their hands touched he seemed to snap back to the real world - his eyes went dark, and the moment of fantasy was over. He pulled his hand away. “I should get going. It was good to see you, Shiro.”

“Wait, Keith…” Shiro touched Keith’s wrist as he started to stand up. Just a brush of his fingers, but Keith stopped as if Shiro had grabbed him. “I’m sorry. Come back to the shop with me. It’ll be like old times.”

Keith closed his eyes and shook off temptation. “Nah, I… I gotta…” He took a deep breath and said, “I have an appointment.” Stooping to reach under the bar, he grabbed the blunderbuss he’d stashed there before Shiro had arrived. Shiro hadn’t noticed it until now, but its presence made it abundantly clear what kind of appointment Keith was talking about. Some poor fool was about to rip through space and time and splash into the present, only to find himself staring at the business end of that gun.

Air whipped and eddied as Keith opened the door, the coolness inside the bar mixing with the hot afternoon stillness outside. Keith stood silhouetted in the doorway, pausing for so long that Shiro began to feel the warmth from the parking lot licking at his arms.

“Shiro?” Keith said in a small voice, his face hidden by the glare of the sun. “If the plane flies, are you going to leave Seattle?”

“Not yet,” said Shiro. He knew it would only embarrass and upset Keith if he told him the truth: though he’d been planning his escape since he was a boy, Shiro now had no intention of leaving the city without Keith. With or without that contract, loop open or closed, as long as Keith was here then so would Shiro be. “One day. But not yet.”

The light shifted just enough to show Keith’s face before he let the door fall closed behind him. In that moment, Shiro thought he saw a flash of relief.

* * *

_In Shiro’s dreams, the city was empty._

_The roiling swelter of humanity gone, the roads unclogged. The air sweet with ocean breeze. The rattle of conversation, chugging machinery, and distant gunshots all fallen quiet. The only sound was the roar of the slat bike engines as he zig-zagged through downtown’s grid alongside Keith. It hummed in his bones and ricocheted between the skyscrapers, filling the city with its joyful wail._

_Keith stood up on his bike and whooped as they turned toward the water, letting the steep slope add to their speed. His hair whipped wildly around his face and his thin T-shirt rippled against his body. As the street fell away from them faster than their bikes could follow, they almost seemed to fly._

_A harsh tapping sound cut through the whine of their engines, and the scene slowed as Shiro looked around for its source. Was there something wrong with one of their bikes? Shiro finally noticed that Keith was not wearing protective gear or even a helmet. A crash would be catastrophic._

_Shiro looked down. His bike was gone. He was hurtling through the air at ninety miles per hour, not flying anymore, the road rising up below him to turn his momentum into torn flesh and crushed bones._

The tapping sound continued as he opened his eyes.

The darkness and muggy heat of his attic apartment helped Shiro snap back to reality. The small space above the shop he inherited wasn't originally meant for living, but he couldn't afford anywhere else. And though the basement was cooler and more comfortable during the blazing heat of summer, it was little more than a crawlspace with dust and mold that would earn him another bout of bronchitis. As he listened to the little air conditioner valiantly losing its battle against the warm night, it occurred to him he shouldn't be able to so clearly hear someone knocking at his door from this height.

A stripe of light lanced through the gap between the curtains, flickering as something blocked it from outside when the tapping started again, faster and louder this time.

Shiro quickly shook off the dream and rolled out of bed. Sometimes people in the neighborhood came to him when the weather was bad or when they were strung out on drops because he’d let them take shelter in the shop. He was sure that was the case now and was momentarily stunned when he pulled back the curtain and saw Keith’s face, instead.

He almost chided himself for still being so distracted by the dream. But no, it really was Keith. He was hanging on the outer ledge of the second-story window, his feet braced against the wall and his face peering close to the glass. When Shiro blinked out at him in confusion, Keith mouthed, “Open up!” and knocked on the window once more.

Shiro unlatched the window and Keith hoisted himself inside, landing on all fours. Before Shiro could help him to his feet, Keith was up and whirling to slam the window behind him. He swept the curtains back over it, leaving only a tiny gap that he peered through to scan the quiet street below.

“Keith, what happened?” Shiro asked, reaching for Keith’s shoulder. The tiniest touch made him flinch. The room was dark, the only light coming from the soft glow of the displays on the air conditioner and the clock. They highlighted Keith’s outline as he turned away from the window and grabbed Shiro by the front of his shirt. Even with the weak light only hinting at the contours of his face, Shiro recognized his expression as abject horror.

“I couldn’t shoot him!” said Keith, cracks in his voice breaking through a whisper. “I couldn’t shoot him, I couldn’t shoot him!”

Shiro grabbed him, and he couldn’t tell if it was his hands shaking or Keith’s shoulders. It wasn’t difficult to read between the lines of Keith’s stammering and fear. The Syndicate had assigned him to kill someone tonight. If he didn’t fire his blunderbuss, then that person was still alive, displaced from time, and affecting the flow of the future by every moment of their existence. The Syndicate didn’t like that. Shiro had heard stories about what they did to the loopers who let their marks escape.

There was only one victim who might have made Keith hesitate. “Was it you?” said Shiro.

“No,” Keith whispered even lower this time, as if the Syndicate might be lurking in the darkness beside them. “It was you!”

All of Shiro’s reassurances and advice died on his tongue. It didn’t make any sense. In all the sleepless nights, all the worst-case scenarios he’d spun out in his mind since Keith signed his contract, this was the one thing Shiro hadn’t prepared for. Why would he? What could he possibly have done in the future to earn himself a one-way ticket to the past and a blunderbuss blast to the chest?

While Shiro’s mind struggled to catch up enough to say something, Keith couldn’t seem to stop talking. “I went to the usual place. The old gasworks, through the hole in the fence and between those rusted-out towers. I put down a tarp. Makes it tidier. It was close to midnight. No one on the grass, no one by the water, no one on the hill. Sometimes I have to chase people off so they don’t see, but this time the park was empty. It was so quiet. I just counted down the seconds. Pointed my blunderbuss at the tarp and got ready to shoot…”

In the past, Shiro had begged Keith not to tell him the specifics of his work for Haggar. But now Keith was too panicked to hold his tongue, and Shiro was too stunned to stop him. He babbled on, “When the mark appears, they’re always kneeling. Always in a straightjacket with a bag over their head. Silver bars strapped to their back - that’s my payment, once they’re dead. Always on time, down to the second, every time. But this time, he was late. Just a few seconds, but that had never happened before.”

Keith stared at a spot in the air over Shiro’s shoulder, his eyes focused on nothing as he re-lived that moment. Shiro almost shushed him, almost shook him. Anything to bring him back to the present. But God help him, Shiro wanted to know.

“I hesitated,” said Keith. “When he finally appeared, I wasn’t ready. And while I was getting my blunderbuss back into position, he twisted and the straightjacket was hanging off him in shreds. His hand caught the moonlight. Some kind of metal gauntlet? Whatever it was, it made him strong enough to tear right through the canvas. He moved so fast. He pulled the bag off his head and the gag out of his mouth, and when he yelled my name that’s when I knew who he was. He looked so different. Older. His hair was white, and he had this scar on his face. But no one says my name like that but you. And I couldn’t shoot. Oh fuck, I couldn’t shoot him!”

“Where is he now?” Shiro tried to focus on the practicalities of the situation. It would paralyze him to think too much about the deeper implications, but there were problems here he could try and solve.

Keith shook his head dazedly. ”Don’t know. I just stood there like an idiot with my blunderbuss pointed at him. He had his hands raised, and he was staring at me but he didn’t say anything. I think he figured out I wasn’t going to shoot him so he got up and ran, and I just watched him go. He’s gone. He’s gone and I don’t know where to find him so I came to find you.” He glanced at the clock by Shiro’s bed. “It’s been long enough. Haggar knows by now.”

Shiro took Keith’s face in his hands to steady him. “Keith, look at me. It’s going to be okay. I’m not going to let anything happen to you. They’ll be at your apartment by now, so you can stay here until we figure out a safe place to go.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” said Keith. “Don’t worry about me. I’m here for you! They want their mark dead. You’re their mark. Shiro, we have to get you out of here right now!”

As if on cue, a sudden roaring of engines outside heralded at least three cars flying up the block. Shiro held his breath, willing them to pass by and continue on their way. But they slowed as they approached, and their noise cut out right in front of the shop. Next came the clicks and pops of car doors opening, and a low rumble of voices from outside.

“Shit,” Keith muttered, and ran to the attic door. It opened onto a narrow staircase leading down to the shop on the ground floor. Shiro peeked over Keith’s shoulder in time to see three druids with gats in their hands burst through the front door, the lock chain clattering to the floor behind them. Keith backed into him and shoved him toward the bed, closing the door behind them. “Shit!” he repeated.

While Keith covered the door, Shiro got dressed faster than he ever had in his life. This all felt like a bad dream. But no one is ever really safe in Seattle, and he’d prepared for this day as best he could. He shucked out of the thin t-shirt he’d slept in and pulled on his riding gear. They weren’t the most comfortable clothes he owned, but they were the sturdiest, and they might provide a little protection when this encounter inevitably turned violent. He also scrambled under the bed to retrieve a small bug-out bag he’d packed years ago and always kept fresh - a change of clothes, a little money, some food, first aid kit, and the like. It seemed so light as he slung it over his shoulder. He should have made it bigger, packed it better. There were so many things he was leaving behind. He grabbed the box of his mom’s service medals off the shelf to add to the bag, and he was looking around for more to save when he was interrupted by a knock at the attic door.

Keith flinched, but didn’t make a sound as he drew his blunderbuss and aimed it at the door, pressing a finger to his lips.

Shiro froze, but the druid on the other side of the door must have heard the sound of his breathing or the creak of the floorboards under his feet because the boom of a gunshot rattled the attic and a hole appeared in the door. Shiro felt the wind of the bullet riffle his hair as it passed him.

Keith lunged to drag Shiro out of the line of fire just in time before more shots rang out. Beams of light lanced through the door from the stair landing as each new hole appeared. Keith planted the butt of his blunderbuss against his hip. They were standing so close that Shiro felt the recoil when Keith fired.

Instead of popping elegant holes in the wood like the gat bullets, the massive compressed air blast of the blunderbuss punched through the door like a fist. Shiro threw his arm up to shield his eyes from the shower of splinters and the sudden light flooding the attic. When he looked again, he saw the flash of a druid’s coat-tails as they retreated from the blood-spattered stairwell.

Shiro grabbed Keith’s elbow. “You can’t kill them!” he gasped, though of course Keith could, and might have already, but Shiro was less concerned about the druids’ lives than he was about the consequences of attacking Haggar’s people. Even in a city where violence and death were commonplace, everyone knew the druids were off limits. The Witch was not known for being forgiving.

Keith whirled to look at him, wild-eyed as a cornered animal. “I’ve killed so many people just because someone told me to. This is the first time I’ve had a good reason.”

Voices drifted up from below. Shiro couldn’t pick out words, but he could hear their anger. The druids were regrouping. A bullet ricocheted up the stairwell, making Shiro shrink back. Keith stepped forward and fired an answering blast back down.

“Come on!” said Keith with gritted teeth.

“Keith, don’t…” But Keith was already starting down the stairs, pulling the trigger of his blunderbuss over and over, peppering the shop floor with covering fire. Shiro, unwilling to let him walk into danger alone, hurried to keep up.

As they turned the corner at the foot of the stairs, the whole shop erupted into gunfire. Shiro heard the dull impacts of bullets hitting the wall behind him in between the mechanical blasts of Keith’s blunderbuss. Three druids - no, four - had taken cover behind the workbenches and an old car chassis and were returning fire. But they didn’t dare expose themselves to Keith’s onslaught, so their gats’ legendary aim was reduced to blind shots from around the corners of their hiding places.

Meanwhile, the blunderbuss wreaked havoc. Benches and cabinets splintered, and metal twisted with each blast. Tools and parts flew off surfaces to shatter against walls and pillars. Pieces of the ceiling and walls chipped away, filling the room with dust and falling debris. There was broken glass on the floor, and blood. Shiro had known logically that this place was lost to him the moment the druids entered, but it had been his home from his earliest memories, and he didn’t really believe what was happening until that moment as he watched it destroyed in front of him.

He didn’t realize Keith was yelling at him until he nudged Shiro with his foot. “The bike!” Keith screamed over the gunfire. Shiro’s slat bike was parked in an alcove nearby, protected from the hail of bullets, and Keith was edging them toward it. Shiro ran for it while Keith continued to keep the druids at bay. His helmet was hanging on the wall next to the keys; he grabbed them both and vaulted onto the bike, slamming the helmet onto his head as he revved the engine.

The bike wobbled as the energy field below it engaged, setting it hovering. Shiro slapped a button on a nearby wall, and the garage door began rolling open. One of the druids ran to block the escape route, only to fly backwards in a spray of blood as Keith’s blunderbuss tore into him. The garage door was nearly open.

“Keith, get on!” Shiro shouted over his shoulder as he prepared to kick the bike into gear.

Keith kept firing, slower now as his arms tired. The cylinder of his gun’s air compressor was so hot it was making his sleeve smoke where it touched the metal. “Go!” Keith answered. “I’ll cover you!”

“GET ON THE FUCKING BIKE,” Shiro roared.

Startled out of his martyrdom, Keith swung up behind Shiro, holding on with one hand while using all of his strength to keep firing with the other. Shiro peeled out of the shop floor and careened his way onto the road. Keith fired one last volley to take out the front tires of the druids’ cars, leaving them stranded as the slat bike disappeared into the night.

* * *

It was barely morning, with stars still twinkling weakly to the west over the sound, but it was already hot again. Shiro shrank away from the beam of sunlight painting the sidewalk, retreating from both the heat and the visibility as he backed into the shadows. The little alcove in the entryway of an abandoned building was just big enough to hide himself, Keith, and the bike. They’d stayed hunkered in there for the last hour, listening for Haggar’s druids to sneak up on them and watching the darkness recede. Each had offered to keep watch so the other could sleep. As if anyone could sleep at a time like this.

Shiro kept glancing over his shoulder as he shared a couple of granola bars with Keith. The bars, along with a few MREs and some water, were all the food in his bag. It wasn’t enough for more than a couple of days, and the clip of money in there was similarly pathetic. What was wrong with him? He had years’ worth of savings in a safe back at the shop. Why hadn’t he put all of it in the bug-out bag?

The answer was obvious: because he hadn’t really believed he’d need it. He’d packed the little bag as a theoretical precaution, not as a practicality, and it showed. Now everything else he owned belonged to the Syndicate.

Well, almost everything. Shiro turned again to peer across the street where the early morning sun was glinting off the roofs of a storage complex. The place was a bit run-down, like everything else in this neighborhood, so some of the buildings were sagging and there was junk dumped in the aisles between them - everything from trash to the remnants of old appliances to abandoned cars. But the whole lot was ringed by a wrought-iron fence topped with razor wire, and the gate was massive with an electronic lock, so it was relatively secure despite being ugly. That’s why Shiro had chosen it years ago. He couldn’t see the larger buildings toward the back of the fenced lot from his hiding place, but he knew where the hangars were and which one held his Cessna.

There was no movement from that side of the street. In the hour they’d been watching, no one had gone in and no one had come out. “I think it’s safe,” said Shiro.

Keith’s eyes narrowed as he followed Shiro’s gaze. “They could have gotten here before us,” he said. “It could be an ambush.” Neither of them had any idea whether Haggar knew Shiro’s plane existed, let alone where it was, but Keith seemed to think she’d be one step ahead of them. His time in her employ had made him paranoid. Last night, before coming to Shiro’s place, he’d smashed his phone and sunk his slat bike into Puget Sound to keep Haggar from tracking him. Now he had nothing but his blunderbuss, the remains of the bill roll he’d used to pay for their drinks the night before, and the clothes on his body. After all those years of careful saving and planning, he was back on the street and close to destitute, just like he’d been as a child.

“The longer we wait, the more likely they are to show up,” Shiro replied.

Keith answered with a frustrated grunt. “Yeah, you’re right. We can’t sit here forever. Stay here, I’ll check it out.”

“We’ll go together,” Shiro insisted.

Keith shook his head. “You’re their mark,” he reminded Shiro. “They can use you to find your loop, and they’ll take you apart to do it. You have to stay out of sight.”

“Wouldn’t they kill you, too? You broke your contract. Haggar has to have a hit out on you by now.”

“I know Haggar’s people well enough to talk my way out of trouble,” said Keith, though he didn’t look as confident as Shiro would have liked. Shiro almost protested again, but Keith cut him off with a terse, “Stay put, okay?” as he pushed off the wall and stepped out of the alcove.

Shiro caught him by the wrist just as he crossed over from shadow into the sun, making him turn so his hair glowed like a halo behind him. “And what if there’s no one there?” Shiro said. “What if we get to the plane without a hitch? Are we really going to just fly away?”

“What other choice do we have?”

“I don’t know, but this isn’t right. The Syndicate shouldn’t be able to take everything from us like this. Everything we own is back in the shop and at your apartment, everything we’ve been saving to make sure we’d land on our feet when we finally got out of this town. Now we’re going to leave with nothing? Fuck, Keith, wherever we land the plane I don’t even know how we’re going to pay to put more fuel in it.”

Keith reached into the shadow and put a hand on Shiro’s shoulder. “None of that matters now,” he said. “Nothing matters except keeping you safe. Yeah, it’s a risk, but I’ll take my chances as long as I’m with you.”

Taken aback, Shiro obeyed and didn’t follow as Keith slipped out of the alcove and into the morning sun.

Shiro watched Keith dart across the street, quick and quiet as the thief he used to be. He edged along the fence toward a break in the rusted razor wire and clambered up to wiggle through the gap. Once on the other side, he glanced back to give Shiro an encouraging wave. Keith was the only thing moving in the whole lot, and Shiro’s heart leaped. Maybe this could work. Maybe they really could just fly away and never come back.

Keith ran to the control box by the front gate and began mashing buttons. Shiro heard a mechanical thud followed by a creaking as the gate slid open.

The sputter of an engine turning over surprised them both. A black van - the one parked next to the nearest warehouse amidst a handful of rusting and tire-less cars, the one Shiro hadn’t noticed until now was actually working and intact - lurched forward. Keith ran for the widening gap of the gate, but the van cut off his escape and Shiro’s view. All Shiro heard was a brief scuffle in the gravel of the lot bookended by the slamming of van doors, all too fast for him to intervene, and within seconds the van’s tires kicked up dust as it tore through the open gate and out of the parking lot.

Shiro threw his bag back over his shoulder as he scrambled for his bike. He gunned it before he was even all the way seated on it, tires screeching on pavement as he flew after the van. But even as he pulled onto the street, he saw more movement from the storage lot. Four men poured out of the entrances, summoned by the sound of engines, all wearing the long coats marking them as Haggar’s druids.

First they looked at the departing van, but then they spotted Shiro. Each of them pulled a slat bike upright from where they’d been hidden in the nearby piles of rubble and trash, and soon they were swarming toward the gate to cut Shiro off from the van.

Swearing, Shiro flipped his bike around and fled.


	2. the strangers in this town will raise you up just to cut you down

_Haggar’s office was at the top of the tallest of downtown Seattle’s steel-and-glass behemoths. Keith had known where it was all his life. The Columbia Center towered over the city like an obelisk, and when people talked in hushed tones about the Witch of the West they often turned their eyes toward it as if worried she might hear them from her perch. Keith knew where Haggar’s office was. He just never thought he’d see the inside of it. Until now._

_Anticipation rooted in his stomach as the elevator rose to the top floor. A druid led him down a gleaming corridor peppered with doors, all closed save for the one at the far end. When Keith stumbled through it, he was momentarily dazzled by the light flooding through the wall of windows onto a room more elegant and otherworldly than any Keith had seen before. The black floor shone like obsidian, reflecting and absorbing all which stood atop it, serving as the perfect backdrop for furniture untouched by the waste and wreckage of the city below: an overlarge, squared sofa with narrow cushions, rows of shelving standing proud against a wall with tomes better suited to a museum than anything else, and an enormous, stainless desk piled with objects Keith did not care to dwell on._

_The druid escorting him took him by the scruff of the neck and forced him into a chair in front of the desk before taking his place in the more comfortable seat opposite. Keith moved to the edge of his chair, squinting against the sun streaming in through the window. From his vantage point, the light reflected perfectly off the glassy floor to partially blind him. He couldn’t even look at the westmost corner of the room without his eyes burning and tearing._

_He tried to turn away from the light only to find his eyes level with a gat where it hung from the belt of another druid beside him. Further inspection revealed a third covering the door, a silver dollar hovering a few inches off his palm. Their presence restrained him better than any bonds could, so his hands were free to fidget. Keith knew the nervous motion made him look weak, and he tried to still himself, but he couldn’t stop picking at the blood stain on the hem of his jacket. Though his ears had stopped ringing from the gunshot, that stain wouldn’t let him forget the way Regris’s blood had splashed onto him, drying in patches and flakes. The sight of it now kept Keith from dismissing this all as a waking nightmare. Kept him from forgetting what it meant to be here, to be dragged up to meet the Witch._

_Keith was every bit as dead as Regris was. That shot just hadn’t been fired yet._

_The druid behind the desk watched Keith intently. He held a stiletto blade which he twisted in his hands, working the point gently against his fingertips. “That was a bold move, stealing from a Syndicate-owned business,” he finally said. “Especially for a kid. How old are you?”_

_“Sixteen,” Keith lied. He was nineteen, almost twenty now, but everyone said he was small for his age and he vainly hoped they would show leniency to a child. Not that they’d shown any to Regris._

_The druid kept playing with the knife, spinning it lazily around his fingers. Keith tucked his hands against his body and his feet under the chair, mindful of where that blade might end up. “They say you fought like a demon when they captured you. You’re lucky you’re not dead.”_

_Keith didn’t answer that. He’d fought tooth and nail in the hopes they would kill him. Everyone knew it was better to die quick than to face Haggar’s retribution. Regris was the lucky one. Keith looked down at the stain on his jacket and scratched another speckle of dried blood off the fabric._

_“What should we do with you, then?” The druid clearly didn’t expect an answer. It was a question meant to make Keith’s blood run cold, and it worked. When Keith didn’t answer, the man leaned forward to wave the point of his blade inches in front of Keith’s face. “What’s the matter? Didn’t think this far ahead? Dumb street kid like you probably didn’t think any farther than the money you were, oh...” he stammered as he fumbled and dropped the knife._

_It twisted as it fell, point-first toward the top of Keith’s thigh. Instinct told him not to put his hands near the falling blade, nor to make any sudden movements with so many gats in the room. So instead he caught it with his mind, arresting the blade’s fall so it hung suspended in midair for a second or two, its point less than an inch away from his jeans. Then, before any of the druids could think he was trying to arm himself, he gently pushed it away. It floated through the air and clattered onto the desk._

_“You’re TK,” said the druid. His tone had changed. Before, he’d looked at Keith the way a cat looks at a mouse it’s about to toy with. Now he seemed genuinely interested. He pushed the knife back toward Keith. “What else can you do?”_

_Which was the safer response? To pretend to be one of the ordinary TK kids, struggling to lift quarters? Or to show off his unique abilities? Which would keep him alive longer? There was no way to know what they were looking for. And perhaps this was only another game, and a bullet was still waiting for him no matter what he did._

_Assuming the end result would be the same either way, Keith’s pride won out, and he chose to at least leave an impression on the men about to kill him. He crossed his arms over his chest and flexed his mind, pushing the knife off the desk again to hover a few inches in the air. It wobbled a little - it was heavier than Keith had expected. But he soon steadied it and, with what everyone told him was incredible strength and precision, flipped it over and over on itself. Shiro would have been proud._

_The druid watched for several seconds, his face unreadable, before glancing over his shoulder into the corner of the room that was too bright to see clearly, directly into the sunlight’s glare. He seemed to be listening to something Keith couldn’t hear. Then he nodded and vacated his seat._

_The sunlight shifted. Something moved in that too-bright corner. A human shape, spindly and robed, too big for Keith not to have seen before, even with the sun blinding him, stepped forward and took the seat behind the desk. Her face was hidden beneath a hood, but Keith could make out the contour of a pointed chin and parallel tattoos running like tear-tracks down her cheeks._

_Haggar._

_In a raspy voice she said, “You belong to me now.”_

_People always said the Witch had come back from the future to found the Syndicate, and in that moment Keith believed it. She didn’t look like she belonged here. An indescribable energy rolled off her, making Keith’s breath short and his hands shaky. Keith let the knife slip out of his mind’s hold and it thunked into the table, standing up by its point. No more games. “No,” he said._

_“You don’t have a choice,” said Haggar. She lifted her hand, and with a flap and a rustle she was suddenly holding a sheaf of paper. Keith couldn’t tell where it had come from. With her other hand, she similarly produced a fountain pen. Both she offered to Keith. “You’re not walking out of here unless your name is on this contract.”_

_Keith shrugged. After a lifetime of fearing the Witch, it felt strangely intoxicating to defy her. She had no power over him. What could she do to him that he hadn’t already prepared for? Pain? Death? They were old friends of his._

_“You don’t care for your own life,” Haggar observed, chuckling at his brazenness, “but there is something you care for. Maybe a family? Hm, probably not, you have the look of an orphan about you. Maybe the rest of your little street thugs - you rats tend to band together and share a form of perverted loyalty. Maybe a girl. No? A boy?”_

_Keith tried to keep his face completely still. He knew Haggar was fishing for a reaction, and he fought not to give her one. But still she smiled as if he’d somehow given himself away._

_“What’s that in your pocket?” said Haggar._

_Keith’s hand involuntarily went to his jacket pocket. The small hard bulge beneath the bloody fabric reminded him that there was a lighter in there. He didn’t normally carry one, since he didn’t smoke, but he’d picked one up from the display near the register at Shiro’s shop. Just because it was red, his favorite color, and because it had Shiro’s logo on it… Keith’s eyes went wide and his mouth went dry._

_Faster than he could react, the lighter slid out of his pocket and through the air into Haggar’s hand. Her TK was extraordinary. So smooth, so subtle, but also massively powerful - even such a small action thrummed the threads of matter and force throughout the room. Keith couldn’t stop it or counter it, and now he was too afraid to dare try to snatch it back from her. She held it in her closed fist. She didn’t look at it. She didn’t have to. She’d won._

_“I don’t care who they are,” she said. ”I don’t want or need to know. But I could find out with very little effort. There’s no information in this world I can’t learn, and nothing I can’t destroy with a snap of my fingers.”_

_She extended her hand to him, fist still closed around the lighter. Keith reached out to take it. When her hand turned and opened, alongside the lighter, the pen sat in her palm._

_Keith took them both._

_He signed the contract._

* * *

Keith was too busy being disappointed in himself to be afraid. He’d allowed a momentary success to blind him to the greater danger, and as soon as his guard was down Haggar’s men had pounced. He hadn’t even seen who’d grabbed him, stolen his blunderbuss, and thrown him into the back of the van. And now it had been long enough that he’d lost track of the turns, accelerations, and ambient noise. He had no idea where he was, and the van was still moving.

There was no escape route that Keith could find. The roller doors were locked, and the mechanisms didn’t even respond to Keith’s attempts at TK - the movement of the van kept him too unsteady to feel it out like he had with the jukebox. The only connection to the driver’s compartment was a wide, high window with a sliding cover. It clearly wasn’t designed for a person to fit. Keith was small enough that he was sure he could wriggle through it, but he didn’t like the idea of getting stuck halfway and being at the mercy of whoever was in the driver’s seat, so he didn’t bother trying to unlock the hatch. The side windows were blacked out with ink or paint, leaving only smears and gaps for Keith to peek through. The cityscape outside flashed by too quickly for him to make out anything useful.

Finally, the sounds of other vehicles around them faded out and gravel crunched under the tires. The van rolled to a stop.

Keith held his breath. Even his heart seemed to slow as he strained to hear any small sound, any clue about his surroundings or his captors. At first, he heard nothing, and almost became lightheaded with anticipation before the sound of the driver’s side door opening startled a gasp out of him. The van dipped and bounced slightly as the driver exited, and shook when they closed the door behind them. Keith crept along the wall of the van, following the soft sound of footsteps outside. The noise ceased just as Keith crouched by the rear double doors, one hand pressed against the metal, his body coiled like a steel trap on a hair trigger.

The latch clicked. Keith didn’t wait for the door to open. He launched himself through, his momentum swinging the door into his attacker’s face with a satisfying thud. A quick glance at his surroundings put him in a dimly-lit garage. Windows high and small enough that he still couldn’t see what part of town they were in, empty worktops covered in dust without so much as a wrench he could use to defend himself with, and no easy exits. Luckily, there was only one man to contend with. He was still reeling from the blow from the van door, his hand over his face. Keith didn’t give him time to recover. He planted a knee in the man’s midsection and was rewarded with a pained grunt. The man’s hands dropped to guard against another kick, leaving his head exposed. Keith recognized his face the instant after he punched it.

“Shiro!” he gasped.

Shiro – older, much older, but undeniably Shiro – was knocked to one knee by the punch. He grimaced, spat blood, and looked up at Keith with eyes as wild as a summer storm. His face was expressionless. If Keith had made him angry by attacking him, it didn’t show. Only his eyes seethed with intensity, like the charge in calm air before lightning strikes.

Keith’s eyes flicked to Shiro’s belt, where the handle of a gat protruded from a leather holster. His instincts, honed by life on the street and in Haggar’s employ, told him to press the attack and take the gun. But instead of coiling his fist to strike again, he froze. What would he do with a gat in his hand? He hadn’t been able to shoot Shiro last night at the gasworks, and he knew he wouldn’t do it now. Whatever this version of Shiro had gone through, whatever he had become, whatever he planned to do to Keith now that he had him here, Keith knew he wouldn’t be able to pull the trigger. Not even to save his own life.

He couldn’t keep his voice from wavering as he started to say, “Shiro, I…”

Shiro was on his feet before Keith could finish speaking, before he could think about running. Huge, unyielding hands were on him, twisting into his clothes and shoving him backwards. Hinges clanged as Keith’s back hit the corrugated metal of the rolling garage door. He threw his arms up to defend himself, but Shiro’s hands were already on his throat and in his hair. Adrenaline and despair sapped the strength from Keith’s limbs, and a breathless sort of calm gripped him as he prepared to be strangled to death.

He was utterly unprepared for Shiro to kiss him.

The kiss pushed his head against the metal door behind him, crushed his lips against his teeth, and stopped his heart for a beat or two. Blood smeared into his mouth from where his punch had split Shiro’s lip, like copper blooming on his tongue. He followed the taste to curl his tongue against the cut, continued until he found the deeper flavor of Shiro’s mouth, and, unthinking, returned the kiss with hunger to equal Shiro’s wild-eyed assault. Shiro pressed in, his body pinning Keith against the door from hips to chest, and all Keith could do was steal shallow breaths and claw at Shiro’s clothes to try to pull him closer.

Something in him knew he should protest what was happening, or at least question it. But it was Shiro, Shiro’s tongue in his mouth, Shiro’s hands on his face, Shiro’s thigh nudging between Keith’s legs to grind up against him until he was so hard it hurt. God help him, Keith wanted him. He’d always wanted him, and always resisted the urge. But this version of Shiro, out of space and time, untethered from their shared history, had offered him an uncompromising invitation to give in.

Shiro kissed the corners of his mouth, his cheeks, his eyes, his forehead, his temples, as if afraid to miss a single inch of him. Keith didn’t notice that his jacket was on the floor until the shirt underneath was close to following it – he felt it sliding off his shoulders as Shiro released each button, only to yank it the rest of the way open impatiently, fabric tearing and buttons flying. Shiro grabbed him under his arms and hoisted him up the wall. Keith’s feet dangled helplessly as Shiro bowed his face against Keith’s heartbeat, gasping open-mouthed against his skin, breathing him in the way a drowning man fights for air.

Keith held himself up with his legs wrapped around Shiro’s waist and his hands on his shoulders, freeing Shiro to grab handfuls of Keith’s back, flanks, and thighs as he worshipped Keith’s body with his expert mouth. There was a desperate familiarity to his movements, like coming home to a house on fire, running through each room and trying to hold on to everything precious with tongue and teeth and fingernails.

When Shiro finally lowered Keith back to the ground, his legs almost buckled under him and he had to brace himself against the door to stay upright. Shiro fell to his knees. He had Keith’s pants unbuttoned and was wrestling them down over his hips by the time Keith managed to get his feet under himself.

Keith was past protesting, past questioning. He would have urged Shiro on if he’d been able to catch his breath enough for anything more than breathy whimpers. As soon as he was released from the uncomfortable tightness of his pants, it was replaced by the heat and pressure of Shiro’s mouth. Shiro cupped the backs of Keith’s thighs and pulled him in, swallowing him down with the same desperation with which he’d kissed him. Keith was so close to the edge that it only took a few strokes of Shiro’s mouth to tip him over, and he came with his hands curled in Shiro’s hair, trying to pull him nearer though there was no more distance between them left to close.

Slowly, Keith’s body released itself from where it had clenched around his orgasm, and his mind cleared from where it had sunk into the fog of desire and passion. Shiro sat back, panting and dragging the back of his hand across his mouth, while Keith slid to the floor. His legs splayed out at odd angles, bound together by his pants bunched around his knees, and his ruined shirt hung off him from one wrist. They sat there, shaking, breathing heavily, almost touching, until they’d both recovered enough to speak. And then they sat a while longer as they worked out what to say.

It was Keith’s first real chance to study this Shiro up close. The hair he’d thought was white was actually ticked with strands of darker gray. He’d noticed the scar on his face last night, but from a distance he hadn’t appreciated the way it dipped into the bridge of his nose, a hint of how terribly deep the wound that made it must have been. His face was made up of rough planes separated by deep creases. No one part of him was recognizable as Shiro; only by pulling back and looking at his whole face could Keith see the ghost of the young man he’d once been hidden in the proportions and outlines.

Shiro’s shirt was torn, either by the fight or what came after, and it hung off his right shoulder. Just above his biceps was a splash of scar tissue where flesh became metal, the gauntlet on his hand extending up his entire arm. No. Not a gauntlet after all. A prosthetic. The scars spread in lines and starbursts up his shoulder and across his chest before dipping below the fabric of his shirt to continue down his torso and, probably, elsewhere. Keith tried to reconcile that roadmap of trauma with the young, whole Shiro he knew, but the thought made him queasy.

Shiro didn’t try to hide his body. Instead, as Keith’s eyes lingered on him too long, he hurried to grab at the thin, silver chain around his neck. There was some kind of pendant hanging there, but Keith didn’t get a good look at it before Shiro’s hand closed around it and pulled it over his head to stuff it in his pants pocket. He looked almost sheepish as he stared at the floor to avoid Keith’s gaze, but he finally broke the silence with a hoarse clearing of his throat and said, “You probably have some questions.”

“Yeah, no shit,” said Keith.

That surprised a helpless, almost delirious, laugh out of Shiro. His lips fought against the lines of his face to let a smile break through. “God, it’s good to see you.”

Keith’s belt was still around the middle of his thighs. He lifted his hips to hoist his pants back up and button them. “You sure saw me.”

“I’m sorry,” said Shiro. “I shouldn’t have…”

“No, it’s…” they stammered over each other for a second before both falling quiet. Keith couldn’t say it was okay. This definitely wasn’t the way he’d wanted it to happen. But he’d be lying if he said he hadn’t wanted it to happen at all. Another awkward silence stretched between them until Keith took up the offer and asked the first of his questions.

“What the hell happened to you, Shiro?”

He flinched and pulled the remains of his shirt closed over his chest. “No one’s called me Shiro in a long time. Not since…” His eyes got far away for a second before he shook himself back to the present. “Call me Takashi. I’m more used to it.”

“Fine,” said Keith. “Takashi. So, what happened?”

Takashi bowed his head, seeming to search for the words to begin explaining. But before he could begin to speak, he jumped, his head snapping up to look at the door. “Oh, shit,” he muttered.

“What?”

Keith’s jacket was still on the floor. Takashi scooped it up and tossed it at him. “Get dressed,” he said as he buttoned up his shirt. He picked at the tear in the shoulder, frowning.

“Is someone coming?” said Keith. His own shirt wasn’t salvageable. He pulled the remnants off and zipped his jacket up over his bare chest.

“Yeah,” Takashi sighed, but instead of reaching for his weapons he just stood there with a tight grimace on his face. “Wow, I really fucked this up.”

Keith didn’t have time to demand more answers before the roar of a slat bike engine crescendoed outside. Gravel pinged off the side of the building like hail, kicked up around its energy field as it whined its way to a stop. Keith positioned himself protectively in front of Takashi as the garage door rolled open, lifted by someone outside.

A figure stood in the doorway, lit from behind by the late summer sun, barely distinguishable as human in the distortion of the glare. “KEITH?!” Shiro bellowed as he charged inside.

“Shiro!” Keith gasped in relief as he ran to meet him. As soon as he was within reach, Shiro grabbed him into a bone-crushing hug. His fingers dug into Keith’s back even through the leather of his jacket. “I’m okay!” Keith squeaked around the pressure of the embrace.

Then Shiro’s grip loosened as he looked over Keith’s shoulder and spotted the third person in the room - his scarred and weathered doppelgänger with one hand raised in awkward welcome.

“Hey,” said Takashi.

* * *

“Thirty years ago,” said Takashi, “I was asleep in the shop when Keith woke me up knocking on the door. He was erratic, panicky. I couldn’t get him to sit down and talk. He just paced the shop, muttering to himself, and every once in a while he’d startle and look at me like he was making sure I was still there. Finally I calmed him down enough so he could tell me. He’d killed a mark that night. Went off without a hitch. But afterwards, he’d looked under the mask and recognized the face. It was me, he said. I told him he was just being paranoid, but he even took me to see the body. As different as that body looked compared to me back then, I couldn’t deny we were the same person. Just like you can’t.”

Keith’s stomach turned at the thought. His finger had been so heavy on the trigger last night. It would have taken so little for this loop to play out exactly as the last one had.

But Takashi wasn’t looking at Keith. He was looking at Shiro, who sat on one of the worktops with arms crossed and shoulders hunched, staring back at his double like he was seeing a ghost. It was disorienting, the two of them together. Keith wasn’t sure if that was the timestream struggling with the paradox at work, or his own confusion and anxiety. Shiro hadn’t mentioned it, but he couldn’t have failed to notice their missing and damaged clothes. Keith longed to explain himself, though he had no idea what he would say.

Shiro’s voice was flat when he said to Takashi, “If Keith killed you… the other you… us… then he wouldn’t have been in trouble with the Syndicate. He could have finished out his contract and you could have gone on with your life.”

“We could have. Not sure how that would have turned out. But what we did was run. Keith was convinced he could stop them from ever looping me back in the first place. We flew to the other side of the world, a few times over, trying to stay one step ahead of Haggar. That turned out…” Takashi looked down at his prosthetic hand, flexing his fingers and wincing. “...not great.”

“She caught you,” Keith murmured.

Takashi nodded. “You’d broken your contract to leave with me. She couldn’t let that slide. After a few years of running, we’d both killed enough of her druids that she was never going to let us go.”

“You sped things up this time,” said Shiro ruefully. “It won’t take us years to get on Haggar’s bad side. She wanted us both dead from the moment you stopped Keith from killing you.”

“I know,” said Takashi. “It was a risk I had to take. I can’t affect the future if I’m dead, and I had to make sure you two ended up on a different path this go-around.”

Shiro scoffed. “Then with all of your wisdom from the future, tell us: what should we do?”

“Stand and fight.”

“No,” said Keith, making both Shiros turn their intense stares off each other and onto him. He’d seen how Haggar dealt with the people who threatened her rule over Seattle. The thought of sending Shiro - either of them - to face her was monstrous. “You don’t know what Haggar is capable of. We don’t stand a chance against her. You were right to run. We just have to do it better this time.”

“I know exactly what she’s capable of,” Takashi answered, gesturing to his missing arm. “I learned the hard way that you can’t outrun the Syndicate.”

“We can’t fight them, either,” Keith insisted.

Takashi closed his eyes and put a hand to his temple, wincing as if hit by a sudden pain. “Just… don’t make up your mind yet. As long as you haven’t decided, there are so many possibilities. Once you commit to a path, everything you didn’t choose gets closed off. All of the bad from my loop is still waiting for you if you run, but I can see some good if you change your mind.”

“Are you saying you can see the future?” Shiro demanded.

“No, of course not. I can remember it.”

Keith and Shiro fell silent and waited for him to explain.

Takashi sighed as he tried to find the right words. “Everything that’s going to happen to you has already happened to me. So I remember it, but it’s foggy. Bits and pieces come in and out of focus as they become more and less likely to happen. Some things from my original loop are impossible now, so I don’t remember them anymore. But lots of new things are possible, and I can get hints of them. I just can’t see what decisions will make them happen or not.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” said Shiro. “You told us you remember Keith coming to you after killing your double, but that didn’t happen this time. He let you go.”

“I told you what happened, not that I remember it,” said Takashi. “As soon as Keith hesitated to shoot me, that memory started getting hazy. When I ran, it was gone. Now it’s just a memory of a memory. I still have all the details, but not the mental imprint. What I actually remember now is Keith tapping on our window and shooting our way out of the shop. Nice job on the escape, by the way.”

“So you can remember everything Shiro remembers?” said Keith.

“That’s right. How do you think I knew to wait for you at the storage lot? My memory is a jumble of probabilities, until we hit the present moment and whatever is happening to... you.” He gestured at Shiro, seeming reluctant to call him by their shared name. “Then it all snaps into place.”

The conversation stalled as they absorbed the strange mechanics of the unique paradox they found themselves in. Shiro looked uncomfortable. Keith could understand why. Seeing himself so old and changed, hearing about his fearsome destiny ahead, would have unnerved anyone. But Keith felt drawn to Takashi the same way he had always felt drawn to Shiro. He had gotten each of them into this mess, and now he was responsible for both of their safety.

“This is all fascinating, but what now?” said Shiro. “Unless you’re suggesting we storm Haggar’s offices this afternoon with our bare hands, Keith and I need to find a place where we’ll be safe from her long enough to make a plan.”

Takashi nodded in agreement. “I have some ideas,” he said.

“Not necessary,” said Shiro tersely, standing to position himself between Takashi and Keith. “You’ve passed along your message from the future. We can take it from here.”

“Don’t be stupid. I can help you!” Takashi snapped.

“Oh, like you helped by kidnapping Keith and leaving me to shake off those druids on my own?!”

“The druids were going to pounce any second, and Keith was the only one I could get to quickly. I knew you could take care of yourself.”

“You could have picked both of us up if you’d tried! You just wanted to get Keith alone!”

Keith jumped between them with a hissed, “Shut up!” They all fell silent, and from outside came the distant whine of slat bike engines. It could have been some kids out for a joyride, of course, but most of the people in Seattle who could afford toys like that didn’t come to these parts of town. Keith didn’t have time to listen to the two Shiros bicker at each other, not when the sound of those bikes was getting closer.

“Did they follow you?” Takashi demanded of Shiro.

“No way…” Shiro shook his head, but he looked unsure.

The noise grew louder as several bikes pulled into the gravel lot just outside. Keith couldn’t see them from behind the closed doors, but by the rumble of their energy fields they were very close. He said, “It doesn’t matter how they found us! We have to go!”

“You’re right.” Takashi took Keith’s hand and pulled him toward the van. “Both of you, come with me. I can get us somewhere safe.”

Shiro already had ahold of Keith’s other hand, and was pulling him in the other direction, toward his slat bike. “I don’t need your help. Keith, get on the bike.”

Keith shook his hands free of both their grips and snapped, “Would you get over yourselves? This isn’t about one of you being right; it’s about us not getting killed!”

To punctuate his point, the engines on the other side of the doors cut out, and a low murmur of voices became audible alongside the click of gats being drawn and cocked. Someone tried to lift the rolling garage door, but after Shiro’s sudden appearance Takashi had bolted them shut.

“Takashi Shirogane?” someone said. Both Shiros had the presence of mind not to answer. Keith was one step ahead of them, and dragged them both behind a sturdy metal workbench just before the druids opened fire.

With gunshots cracking like a thunderstorm and bullets perforating the garage door to ping off the walls around them, Keith shouted, “You two get in the van! I’ll take Shiro’s bike and lead them away from you!”

United for once, both Shiros replied, “NO!”

“You’re the ones they’re after!” Keith protested. “I’ll have a better chance of escaping!”

Takashi sputtered, pointing at Shiro, “They’re after _him_ so they can use him to get to me. They’re after _you_ so they can kill you on sight! You’re in way more danger than us!”

Shiro threw his hands in the air, exasperated but vindicated. “Thank you!”

“I’ll get the door,” said Takashi through gritted teeth. “You get the bike.”

“Wait…” Keith began, but they’d already sprung into action. Takashi slid over the top of the workbench and into the line of fire. He dashed to the opposite wall, unbolted the doors, and slapped the button to open them. The doors began to roll upwards, making the druids outside shout in surprise and excitement.

Meanwhile, Shiro scrambled out from behind the bench toward his bike. He started the engine as the doors trundled upwards, taking advantage of the momentary lull in gunshots as the druids peered inside. He paused just long enough for them to get a good look at his face before jamming his helmet on and accelerating past them back onto the road.

Most of the druids got back on their bikes and gave chase, but a few stayed, creeping into the garage with their gats drawn. Keith had used the confusion to jump into the driver’s seat of the van. He grabbed his blunderbuss from where Takashi had jammed it between the seats and whirled around to open fire. But the druids were too far away. Past fifteen feet, the blunderbuss’s cone of compressed air dispersed and lost its force; the best it managed was to knock one druid off her feet momentarily. But the shock and noise was enough to make them hesitate, and in that gap Takashi joined Keith in the van.

“Keys!” Keith shouted as Takashi ran past. Takashi tossed them to him as he dove into the passenger seat. He put a hand on the back of Keith’s head and forced him to duck as Keith reversed out of the garage, just in time for the driver’s side window to shatter and a bullet to lodge itself in the van roof. Keith kept his foot on the gas until gravel crunched under the tires and sunlight flooded the cab. He then threw it into drive and made for the road, following Shiro and his pursuers. One of the druids had run ahead of them to open fire through the windshield. He was fast, but not fast enough, and the van lurched sickeningly as it rolled over him.

Keith didn’t look back to see if he’d left anyone capable of following them. He sped in the direction he’d seen Shiro go. But the streets here were dense and unfamiliar, and Shiro was nowhere in sight.

“Where is he?” said Keith as he skidded around a corner on two wheels, chasing the distant sound of bike engines but unable to pinpoint their source.

Takashi had two fingers through the handle above the door, calmly steadying himself against Keith’s wild driving. “Don’t go after him,” he said. “He’s buying us time. Slow down and take the next left, I know somewhere safe.”

“You know me pretty well,” Keith panted. “Well enough to know I’m not going to leave him when he’s in trouble. Where is he?!”

“I don’t know.”

“You just said…!”

Takashi cut him off, “I have all his memories, but from my perspective they happened thirty years ago! I have no idea where he is minute to minute! It’s not telepathy!”

Cursing under his breath, Keith stomped on the gas and kept scouring the streets. He couldn’t even go by sound anymore, as Shiro had gotten too far away to hear. He just zoomed up the main road, dodging cars and trash piles, looking out for Shiro’s distinctive black-and-purple bike and leaving a flurry of angry honking and shouting in his wake.

“Wait a minute,” said Takashi. Keith didn’t slow, but when he looked over he found Takashi with eyes closed and the heel of his hand pressed to his forehead. “I remember getting cut off and forced onto a ramp. He’s on the interstate.”

That was bad. In the city, Shiro had a chance to lose his pursuers in the side streets and alleys. On the freeway, there was nowhere to hide.

“Which exit is he closest to?” said Keith. He finally recognized where he was, not well enough to navigate confidently but just well enough to find I-5. He turned toward the ramp.

Shiro pinched the bridge of his nose as he concentrated. “He’s not downtown… I think he’s north of us…” The on-ramp was fast approaching. The van straddled the lanes that would take it in either direction up or down the freeway. Just as Keith was about to beg for an answer, Takashi’s eyes flew open and he shouted, “The water was on my right. He’s heading southbound!”

Tires screeched as Keith changed direction at the last second to get on the ramp heading south. I-5 twisted ahead of them like a concrete river. It was clogged with traffic, as always, but at least it was a Sunday morning instead of the gridlock of weekday rush hour. Keith positioned himself in the middle lane and tapped his brakes to force space between himself and the car ahead of him, getting ready to gun it.

The desperate whine of multiple slat bike engines behind them signalled Shiro’s arrival. “There they are,” said Takashi, peering backwards out the window. Keith could see them in his side view mirror. Shiro rode like a bat out of hell, making full use of his bike’s power and his own skill. He weaved through cars so nimbly that his knees almost touched the ground on the turns. Behind him, five more bikes buzzed trying to keep up. To Keith’s surprise, not all of them were ridden by druids. Two of Shiro’s pursuers wore riding armor instead of black coats and brandished blunderbusses instead of gats. Apparently Haggar’s bounty had attracted some loopers as well as the druids. One was almost on top of Shiro, matching him turn for turn.

A line down the fast lane opened up, just to Keith’s left. Shiro jumped into it and gunned the throttle just as the looper started closing in. When the pair of bikes drew level with the van, Keith stomped on the accelerator and wrenched the wheel. Shiro flew past him as the hapless looper crunched into the driver’s side door and went down in a hail of shattered bike pieces.

The van wasn’t as fast or maneuverable as the bikes, but Keith pushed it to its limits to keep up, placing it like a wall between Shiro and their remaining pursuers. When one of the druids found an opening to creep up on Shiro, trying to edge around the van, Takashi leaned his upper body out the window and drew his gat. Keith couldn’t spare any concentration to see what was happening, but he heard the gunshot followed by the crash of the bike into a nearby car as its rider lost control. Keith didn’t glance at his mirror to find out whether the druid had survived. He just kept driving.

The tires screamed as he weaved the lanes, dodging into gaps with inches of clearance for the wide van. Shiro couldn’t stay in the open lanes for long, or he risked making himself an easy target. Haggar’s people, for all their ruthlessness, weren’t willing to shoot through cars full of bystanders to get to him. So they blazed through traffic in a slalom pattern, and Keith struggled not to lose them.

A slowdown up ahead tightened the grid of cars, and the slat bikes positioned themselves to split the lanes. For the van, there was no way through. Keith didn’t let up on the gas. “Keith!” said Takashi nervously.

“MOVE!” Keith screamed as he laid on the horn. A sports car in the left lane was blocking his way, and the druids were fast approaching from behind. When it didn’t move over, Keith rode right up onto its bumper and slammed the brakes at the last second so the crash merely crumpled their chassis instead of totalling both cars. With contact established, he floored it again to forcibly shove the sports car out of his way. A little worse for wear, the van continued down the interstate. The sound of the crashes behind them made most of the cars in Keith’s lane merge right to let him through.

At his first chance, Shiro braked and dipped into the shoulder to pull up level with the van’s driver-side window. Keith yelled through the hole in the glass, “Keep going! I’ll get them off your tail!”

“What about you?” Shiro replied, shouting over the wind and the sound of the engines. “You won't be able to shake them in that boat!”

“Don’t worry about me, get out of here!” He checked the side mirror to see the remaining three bikes screaming up the shoulder after Shiro. Now that he’d stopped dodging through the cars, he was a sitting duck.

“How will you…”

Shiro stopped mid-word as Takashi leaned across Keith’s lap and pointed his gat out the window, using his free hand to cover Keith’s ear as he fired. Even muffled, the gunshot rattled Keith’s skull. Shiro flinched and swerved, but stayed upright. The druid who had been creeping up on Shiro fishtailed and crashed into the median, a bloody hole in his helmet.

“Less talking, more escaping,” Takashi grunted. “I think we’ve established that neither of you is going to leave the other behind. So just keep this thing steady while I… ”

Another gunshot rang out, this one from yards behind and barely audible over the roar of the freeway. The bullet clinked against the rear suspension of Shiro’s slat bike, and the hover field flickered and whined as the machinery made grinding noises around the fresh hole through its inner workings. Shiro revved the throttle to keep level with the van, but he soon started to fall behind and wobble terrifyingly.

There was no time to think, no time to discuss. Keith dragged Takashi into the driver’s seat as he slid out of it. “Drive!” he screamed as he unlocked the porthole and dove through it into the back. He threw the side door open just as Shiro drifted backwards towards it. The bike was smoking and the engine was howling. It wouldn’t last more than another few seconds.

“Grab on!” Keith held on to the frame of the van and leaned out over the rushing asphalt toward Shiro. Shiro reached out to him too, but the bike refused to be controlled. It swerved side to side, keeping Shiro just out of reach. Their fingertips grazed each other over and over as each fumbled for the other’s hand. Finally Shiro lurched toward the van and grabbed Keith’s wrist. Keith planted his feet, ready to pull him inside.

This time, Keith didn’t hear the gunshot. He didn’t see the looper roaring up the lane toward them, her blunderbuss aimed at the handhold that was about to steal her quarry, her aim jumping back and forth as the rough road bounced her arm. And he didn’t see her fall off her bike when the recoil from the blast made her lose control. He only felt Shiro’s hand jerk out of his grasp as a spatter of blood hit his face. With a sleeve swiped across his eyes, he opened them just in time to see Shiro’s bike collapse and skid, shrieking, down the shoulder. Shiro hit the pavement and rolled, loose-limbed as a broken doll.

Keith jumped out of the van after him.

Time slowed as he flew through the air. He saw the last druid, his gat pointed, his bike approaching Shiro’s prone form. He heard Takashi scream wordlessly behind him as he realized what Keith had done. He saw the pavement below him, ready to use his own momentum to throw and pulverize him.

In that instant, he thought of the coins he’d used to practice his TK as a child, setting them hovering in his palm. Other people focused too much on the coin. It was easy for Keith because he focused on everything but the coin, choosing instead to warp the gravity and air resistance around it until it twitched and rose.

And now, even though it should have been impossible, he used the same principle to tug at the strings of matter and force that had him on a collision course with the surface of the freeway. He redirected them as he bent his knees, put his feet under himself, and landed.

The ground buckled under him, deep cracks running through the pavement like a punched mirror. A shockwave ran through him, rattling him but not breaking him. His body absorbed the impact as easily as if he’d jumped out of the van while it was standing still.

The van’s brakes screeched as Takashi spun around to go back for him. “KEITH!” he yelled.

Keith barely heard him. He was running on feet as light as air toward where Shiro lay near the crashed ruin of his bike. Everything seemed hazy and indistinct, even his own body, and Keith realized that he was more tired than he could ever remember being. But he pushed that aside. He had to get to Shiro.

The druid was trying to get to Shiro too, racing Keith from the other direction. He was faster than Keith, and closer. And even as he was about to win, he aimed his gat one last time at Keith.

Keith knew slat bikes. Shiro had taught him enough about them for him to know how delicate their engines could be. It was such a simple thing to disrupt them. A simple thing, at a great distance, on a moving target… Keith reached inside the bike bearing down on him and _pushed_.

The engine fell silent. The force field died without so much as a flicker. The bike, no longer held aloft, arced toward the pavement, its nose digging into the asphalt to act as a fulcrum and flip its rider face-first into the road.

It was the last thing Keith saw before everything went black.

* * *

When Keith woke up, he was back in the van. The textured ceiling above swam in and out of focus as the movement of the vehicle shifted his body back and forth on the hard metal floor. Everything hurt. For a moment he couldn’t move at all, but soon fear overwhelmed the pain and forced himself to wiggle his fingers, toes, arms, legs... Nothing seemed broken, so he sat up. No wounds beyond a couple of scrapes. So why did every bone and muscle feel like they had been torn apart and hastily patched back together?

The only thing that didn’t hurt was his head. Which was incredible since he hadn’t been wearing a helmet during his dive out the back of a moving vehicle. His head did feel foggy, though. Like his skull was too big and his brain was rattling around in there. It took him a moment to convince himself that he was real, and alive.

“You’re awake!” said Shiro - no, Takashi - from the front, breathless with relief. The port was open, and Keith could see through to the driver’s cab. Compared to the darkness of the back, the windshield was uncomfortably bright, and Takashi’s face was lost in a halo of light. “How’s the other me? He must not be dead yet, since I’m still here.”

Only then did Keith look around, his vision still shifting dizzyingly, and notice the body lying next to him. “Shiro?!” he croaked, his voice hoarse with exhaustion and horror.

Shiro looked like a corpse. A bright spatter of blood was stark against his deathly-pale face, and he was so still that Keith had to press an ear to his chest to make sure he was still breathing. He was, but slowly, haltingly, and his heartbeat was fast and weak. Keith’s face felt cold and sticky as he sat back up, and when he touched his cheek his fingers came away red. His stomach clenched as he realized how much blood was hiding in the black of Shiro’s bike clothes - they were soaked with it. Blood was smeared on the floor below him, too, the puddle spreading with every swerve of the van and staining the hem of Keith’s jacket.

Keith tried not to look at where the blood was coming from. Shiro’s shoulder was shredded, the torn pieces of his coat mingling with his stripped flesh in a thick soup of clotted blood, and his arm was gone. Just gone, as if it had melted into the dark, sticky liquid sloshing where it collected around the rivets on the van floor. Keith knew he shouldn’t have been surprised. He’d seen Shiro take the hit, he knew how destructive a blunderbuss could be, but he still couldn’t look at the wound for more than a second or two without tasting bile.

“Don’t mess with that tourniquet,” said Takashi, just as Keith noticed the belt cinched tight around the stump of Shiro’s arm. “It’s the only thing keeping him from bleeding to death.”

“He’s still bleeding a lot.” Keith’s voice sounded far away, even to his own ears, and his tone was strangely numb. The van lurched, shifting Shiro’s body with its momentum. He only slid a few inches, but Keith grabbed at him frantically, breathless with the fear of him slipping away.

Takashi hit the brakes just before screeching around a turn, jostling his passengers again. “It’s at least slowing it down. When I got to him, blood was spitting in the air.”

That image slid into Keith’s brain like a knife, and with a jolt he was back on the freeway, blood spraying. Blood was on the pavement, too, where that last druid’s crash had turned his face into a long, red streak. It was bubbling in Regris’s mouth as his lungs filled up and overflowed, and splashing onto a tarp in the shadows of the gasworks dozens and dozens of times, blood everywhere. Keith’s past was dripping with it. Death and violence stuck to his heels like a shadow. How had he ever believed he could keep Shiro safe?

“Hey. HEY!” Takashi stuck his hand through the porthole and snapped his fingers at Keith, metal pinging bright against metal. “Stay with me, baby! I need you!”

Focusing was like trying to swim through sand. But Keith managed to mumble, “We have to get him to a hospital.”

Takashi grunted, “No hospitals. Haggar has eyes on all of them. I learned that the hard way.”

“Then where…?”

“I know someone. At least, I did a long time ago, and I’m about to again. Try to keep him from dying before we get there.”

Keith would have done anything to follow that order, but the best he could do was shrug out of his jacket, leaving himself bare-chested, and press the wadded-up fabric to Shiro’s wound. It didn’t staunch the bleeding much, soaking up more blood than it kept in his body.

Finally, the van swerved one last time and hopped over a speed bump before rolling down an incline. The sunlight streaming through the windshield went dark, and Keith realized they were descending into an underground parking lot. As soon as the van stopped, Keith rolled the door open and sat on the edge, leaning out far enough to see their surroundings while still keeping one hand on Shiro. The lot was tiny and deserted. It had surely once been garage space for a condo or office - a glass door on the far wall led to an elevator with access to the building above - but there was no one here now. The glass was broken, and the elevator stood with doors slightly askew and nothing but empty darkness in the shaft. They’d reached a dead end.

Takashi ignored the elevator, and instead sprinted to the opposite wall. Keith didn’t realize there was another door there until Takashi started pounding on it. It was a small maintenance access door painted the same color as the wall, with a peeling warning sticker on it and a broken handle, so obviously disused that Keith’s eyes had slid right over it. But Takashi knocked and knocked, so loudly and persistently that Keith was sure someone would hear them from the street.

Just as Keith began to think no one would answer, a small panel beside the door opened with a clack. A lens glinted from inside the hole, the eye of a camera peering out at them. Takashi immediately stopped knocking and addressed the camera. “Hey, Holt! Open up!”

The door didn’t open, and the camera did nothing but swivel slightly. It looked Takashi up and down, then looked past him at Keith and the van. Takashi stooped to put his face in front of it. “I don’t have time to explain. I know you don’t like taking new patients without a referral, but I swear we’re not cops and we’re not Syndicate.” (Keith flinched, but said nothing. After all, he wasn’t Syndicate _anymore_.) “We have one bleeding out and we need your help!”

The panel slid shut again, hiding the camera from view. “Figures,” Takashi sighed, and wedged his metal fingers into the gap to tear the panel off the wall. He waved his prosthetic in front of the lens, turning his hand to show it off from all angles. “Look familiar, Pidge?”

The door, which Keith had thought was rusted shut, cracked open smoothly and soundlessly. Someone inside peeked out at the trio and their battered van, then, only after Takashi backed away from the door disarmingly, she emerged. She was a short woman with wild brown hair pushed back by the strap of her welding goggles. Her smock was smeared with oil and pock-marked with burns, and she carried a handgun that, by the look of it, worked by the same compressed air mechanism that Keith’s blunderbuss used. He hadn’t known it could be made so small. Not even the Syndicate could make them like that.

“Who the hell are you?” she demanded.

“Good to see you too, Pidge,” said Takashi, and he sounded like he genuinely meant it. “I’ve got someone for you to patch up.”

Pidge wasn’t looking at Shiro, though. She was inspecting Takashi’s prosthetic from shoulder to fingertips. “This is my work,” she muttered, confused. “But I didn’t make this.”

Takashi gestured behind him to the open door of the van, where Keith was cradling Shiro’s limp form. “You’re about to.”

That finally got Pidge’s attention. She motioned for Keith to come closer, clearly not trusting him enough to get close to the van. Keith couldn’t imagine what he looked like to her - naked from the waist up, smeared in blood, and half-crazed with delirium and grief.

Keith lifted Shiro out of the van and Takashi helped him carry him across the garage floor for Pidge to examine. “Oh shit, he’s not dead!” she said, surprised. She glanced between Shiro and Takashi, comparing their faces. “I get it. Okay, we’ll take you. But I’m gonna need double my usual fee for harboring fugitives of the Syndicate.”

“We don’t have any money,” said Keith. His savings were in his apartment, and Shiro’s were in the shop - both overrun with Syndicate troops.

“Wait,” said Takashi. He went back to the van and pulled something out from under the seat. It was the torn straightjacket he’d arrived in. He threw it at Pidge’s feet and ripped open the back to expose the stacks of silver bars.

Pidge scooped them up before Takashi could say anything more, though Keith would have thought they’d be too heavy for her little frame. “Done,” she said. “Bring him. Follow me.” Her hands were full, but as she kicked the door open she raised her watch to her face and turned on the touch screen by poking it with her tongue. Into the microphone on the wristband, she said, “I’m letting them in, Allura. Traumatic amputation. Prep O-R.”

Keith and Takashi followed her through, carrying Shiro as best they could between them, and entered a dingy hallway lit at random intervals by bare, flickering bulbs. Part of the ceiling was caved in, and there was mold on the walls. Keith couldn’t imagine why Takashi had brought them to such a place, but when he turned to protest Takashi was busy strapping Shiro to a stretcher that had been leaning against the wall just inside the door. The question died in Keith’s throat. Shiro didn’t have time to go anywhere else.

Pidge locked the door behind her and jogged down the hallway, heedless of the patchy darkness and leaping over the piles of rubble without breaking her stride. Keith helped Takashi carry the stretcher, and they did their best to keep up with her. After zig-zagging through the decrepit maze of hallways for a few confusing turns, Pidge opened a trap door leading to a set of stairs. Keith was relieved to see the mold ended there, and the stairway was well lit with clean white strips of light built into the walls. The hallway above was clearly a facade to discourage intruders, and this was their true destination.

At the bottom of the stairs was what looked like a reception area. Clean, eggshell walls, chairs to one side and a low bench opposite, with cots and blankets stacked up in a corner. Across the room, a bin attached to the wall was filled with clipboards and paper charts perched above a metal cabinet with a padlock on the door. It was spartan, but comfortable - a holding area for poorly-trusted strangers.

“Through here!” Pidge called as she scampered ahead and opened a final door. Over her shoulder, Keith saw what was unmistakably a makeshift operating suite. Whirring monitors and other machines were arranged around a steel table, and a large tripod suspended an adjustable light above the whole assembly. A flimsy metal stand beside the table held a tray full of glistening instruments - tiny tweezers and delicately curved scissors, a scalpel, a small saw…

Keith looked away. The room reminded him too much of the Syndicate’s chop shops: mobile surgical parlors that the druids would set up in studios and basements when one of their enemies needed to be interrogated, punished, or just taken apart.

But as he surveyed the rest of the place, Keith realized this was something quite different. He had heard about the secret gang hospitals that treated and hid patients living in Seattle’s underworld - criminals, illegals, anti-government kooks and people living off the grid, and Syndicate fugitives like Shiro. They were incredibly exclusive, to the point that most required a membership or a recommendation before you were even allowed to know where the hospital was located. There were countless rumors about these places: that there were dozens of competing clinics, that there was just a single massive one, that they stayed hidden using cloaking technology, that the doctors were robots, and a hundred other farfetched and contradicting claims. Keith had never seen one in person.

“How did you find this place?” Keith asked as he and Takashi lifted Shiro from the stretcher onto the table.

“I didn’t,” Takashi replied. “In my loop, you were the one who found it.”

The secrecy of the underworld hospitals was legendary. Keith wondered what his other self had done, what lengths he’d gone to, to get someone to give up this location. Looking down at Shiro’s limp and pale form, feeling the gut-deep kick of desperation at the thought of losing him, he could put nothing past himself.

Just as they’d gotten Shiro settled on the table, another door opened and in rushed a woman carrying a bag of fluids on an IV pole. Her hair was bleached so blonde it was almost white, and she was stuffing the long, elegant twists under a surgical cap as she walked.

“Here they are, babe!” Pidge called out.

The woman, who must have been Allura, took one look at her patient and said in a somewhat surprising British accent, “Goodness, are you sure he’s not dead?” She opened Shiro’s eye and aimed the overhead light at his face, seeming satisfied when the pupil constricted in response. So quickly that Keith could hardly keep up with what she was doing, she cinched a length of rubber tubing around Shiro’s remaining arm and flicked an IV catheter into the crook of his elbow.

Keith hovered as she hooked Shiro up to a fluid line and put a plastic mask over his nose and mouth. “How can I help?” he said.

Allura looked up, seeming to notice Keith for the first time. “By staying out of my way,” she said flatly, and got back to work.

“Come on,” said Takashi, clasping Keith’s shoulder and leading him back toward the waiting room. “He’ll be okay.”

As they backed away, Pidge was telling Allura, “I gotta go get rid of their van. They parked it at our front door and it’s kind of conspicuous. You got it from here?”

Allura was busy pulling a clear liquid from a bottle into a syringe, but she leaned over to distractedly kiss Pidge’s cheek as she said, “Nothing I can’t handle. Come home safe.”

Then the doors swung closed behind them, blocking Shiro from sight. As soon as Keith couldn’t see him, as soon as he was out of reach, all of Keith’s terror and anxiety turned inward. The dizziness and weakness that he’d pushed aside returned full force, and he might have collapsed if Takashi hadn’t caught him and guided him to the bench to drape a blanket over his shaking shoulders.

Pidge followed them out of the operating suite and strode toward the stairs, switching her smock for a green jacket as she went and pulling the hood up over her goggles. As she passed her miserable visitors, she pointed at them and said matter-of-factly, “I don’t know who you are. I’ll figure that out later. But wherever you came from, you’re in our house now. Do whatever Allura tells you. If you give her any trouble, I’ll sell your organs to the caravans.”

“You don’t have to threaten us,” Keith growled. “We came here for help, not to make trouble.”

Pidge stopped at the foot of the stairs and backtracked to stare Keith in the face. “That’s rich, coming from one of Haggar’s loopers.” Keith flinched, but Pidge waved his fear away with a flap of her hand and a roll of her eyes. “Relax, I’m not gonna sell you out. I figure if you’re with this pair then the Syndicate hates you right now almost as much as they hate me. But we’re keeping an eye on you. Don’t fuck it up.”

She disappeared through the trapdoor and back the way they’d come. Keith slumped against Takashi, exhausted and heartsick. He felt like he should still be doing something, but there was nothing more to be done except wait.

“What if he dies?” Keith whispered miserably, hating to even speak the words aloud but unable to hold them in.

“He won’t,” said Takashi. When Keith looked dubious at his optimism, he explained, “I can see the future, remember? I mean, not really. It’s just a jumble of probabilities. But right when he got shot, everything went really dark and hazy, like there wasn’t much of a future at all. After you saved him, the fog started to clear. Even more, once we arrived here. It’s still a little shaky, but pretty much back to normal. Minus a few possible futures.”

Keith couldn’t say he was comforted, but at least he felt a little better as he struggled to keep his eyes open. He would have thought his mind was racing too fast to sleep, but his body had other ideas. He could tell he would soon be unconscious whether he wanted to be or not. The stunt he’d pulled on the freeway had really taken a toll on him.

The freeway. He tried to remember how he’d managed to make pavement and gravity yield to him, how he’d stopped a speeding slat bike with his mind. It had been so simple when in the grip of panic and desperation. Now, it seemed improbable, even fake. Yesterday, he’d been proud of himself for nudging a juke box from an arm’s reach away. What he’d done today… he’d never heard of anyone doing such a thing.

“Did you know I could do that?” he mumbled as he began to drift off.

Takashi didn’t need him to explain what he meant. He lifted Keith’s legs across his lap and cradled his nodding head to to his chest. “Oh, Keith,” he said. “You have no idea what you’re capable of.”


	3. the second time around, the only love I ever found

The recovery room off of Allura’s surgical suite was small and dim, a concrete-and-polymer box lit by a row of tiny LEDs along the edges of the ceiling. A small air recycler in the corner kept the room warm without letting the air get stale. The doors - one on each side of the room - stayed closed and locked. Another emergency had come in soon after Allura was done operating on Shiro, and Pidge didn’t want the two sets of patients running into each other. “This is part of the protection package you paid for,” she’d said before she’d barred the doors. That didn’t make the room feel any less like an oversized coffin for three.

Takashi quickly lost track of time. He distracted himself by watching Keith’s chest rise and fall steadily where he lay on the bench against the wall, still fast asleep. He hadn’t even stirred when Takashi had carried him from the waiting area into this room, or when Allura had given him a brief exam at Takashi’s request. His vitals were normal, she’d said. He was just exhausted. No wonder, with the superhuman feat he’d performed on the freeway. A lock of black hair had drifted over his face, and his brow twitched as it tickled his eyelashes. Takashi would have crossed the room to tuck it back behind his ear if it weren’t for the needle in the crook of his arm tethering him to the room’s third occupant.

“Won’t that create a paradox?” he’d asked when Allura had held up the blood transfusion kit. “My blood isn’t even supposed to be in this decade, let alone in his body.”

Allura had rolled her eyes at his objections. “You’ve spent the last twenty-four hours affecting as many points in your own timeline as you could possibly manage, but this is too risky for you?”

“I don’t know!” Takashi had sighed. “It’s not like there’s a manual for this. I just don’t want the time continuum to implode.”

“I’ll tell you what, if you think it’ll be safer for the time continuum, you can just let him die of hypovolemic shock.”

Takashi couldn’t argue with her logic, and now here he was, trying not to watch his blood pump its way through the sterile tubing and into his younger self where he lay unconscious on a narrow cot. His body was slack in its drugged stupor, bruises blooming livid all over him, with a large bandage wrapped around his chest and the stump of his missing right arm. Takashi caught himself staring, and turned his eyes up toward the lights on the ceiling instead. He didn’t like thinking about the day he’d lost his arm. Getting the chance to experience it again, this time from a new perspective, was like some kind of perverse joke.

Even stranger, his own memory of the event was changing. In his own timeline, he’d been captured by the Syndicate, and his arm amputated as part of an interrogation. He knew this fact, but he could no longer access the visceral images and emotions of that day. The memory was gone. He now only recalled it as if someone had told him the story secondhand. In this loop, he’d lost his arm on the freeway, so that’s what he remembered. As soon as it became impossible for the other scenario to play out the way it had before, it faded away.

Now the rest of his memories - the events of his loop, as well as all the possibilities of this new one - hovered like electrons in valence, becoming sharper or fuzzier as they became more or less likely to occur. New potential paths arose as old ones fizzled out, and every choice he made (and every choice Shiro and Keith made) changed the shape of that vaguely-remembered future.

For the most part, he didn’t like what he saw. There were only a handful of good outcomes in a morass of bad. He’d been prepared to overwrite his own past, but what good was that if he just replaced it with new ways to suffer?

He blinked as the lights started to blur together, looking back down at the broken boy on the cot in front of him. Takashi had been so ambitious with his plans for this younger version of himself. He’d let himself believe he could avoid all the bad while keeping all the good. But when it counted, he couldn’t even change this simple thing.

Shiro stirred.

Takashi froze, willing him to go back to sleep, but Shiro’s eyes opened and tracked dazedly back and forth until they blinked, focused, and cleared. The sight of Takashi leaning over him made him flinch. Then, made aware of his body again by that tiny movement, he gasped and jerked as the pain hit him.

Pain like that has a way of making everything around it stick in the mind, even thirty years later, so the memory of his own words wrote itself in searing detail even as he said them now: “Don’t move. It’s okay, you’re safe.”

Shiro’s eyes flicked back and forth, his chest heaving as he tried to make sense of the strange place and terrifying sensations. “It hurts…” he croaked.

When this had happened to Takashi - when he’d awoken in fear and horror to find less of himself there than before - Keith had been beside him to hold his hand through it. But Keith was asleep, and Pidge and Allura were busy with their other patients. There was no one here to answer but Takashi. This wasn’t supposed to be his role, and he didn’t want it, but, ironically, no one could understand better what Shiro was going through. So he answered, “You’re panicking right now because the pain is getting worse as you wake up, and you’re thinking it’s going to be more than you can take. But it’s only going to get so bad before it levels off, and then you’ll be able to get on top of it. I promise. Just keep breathing.”

Shiro took his advice, closing his eyes and breathing through the cresting wave. When his eyes opened again they were scared and hurt, but in control. His voice was hoarse and even the single word seemed to take all the effort he could muster, but he managed to say, “Keith?”

“He’s over there.” Takashi nodded toward the bench where Keith lay. “I’ll wake him up. He’ll be happy to talk to you.”

“No! Let him sleep.” Shiro’s voice was stronger now. He slowly, carefully, let his head fall to look where Takashi had indicated. Some of the painful lines in his face smoothed out at the sight of Keith’s peaceful form. “He used to fall asleep under the cabinet in the shop when he was a kid. I started stashing blankets down there for him.”

The memory took Takashi by surprise. “I remember,” he replied.

It might have been the drugs tearing down inhibitions, or the brush with death making him honest, but Shiro whispered, “I love him.”

Takashi nodded, more to himself than to Shiro. “You always will.”

Time was fluid in that windowless box. They might have spent a minute, or five, or sixty in silence. Shiro turned his face upwards toward the ceiling, lights swaying like fairies above him. He twitched his nose, feeling the pull of the tape bandage across its bridge, and his eyes flicked to Takashi’s matching scar. “How bad is it?” he finally said.

Takashi’s stomach twisted. “Don’t think about that right now.”

“Can’t think about much else,” said Shiro. Then, when Takashi still didn’t answer, he added, “Screw it,” and lifted his head with a grunt.

“Don’t look…” Takashi tried to say, but Shiro was already staring at the bandages circling his body, looking confused at the way they ended at his right shoulder. It took him a few seconds to recognize what he was seeing. Then his head dropped back onto the cot. His breathing came fast and shallow until his chest heaved with an unexpected retch.

Takashi put a steadying hand on Shiro’s shoulder. “Whoa, okay. If you’re going to throw up I’ll help you roll over. But I can tell you from experience it’ll hurt like a son of a bitch, so hold it in if you can.”

Shiro dry heaved twice more, tears pricking the corners of his eyes, but he managed not to vomit. After he’d swallowed down his nausea, he seemed to notice Takashi’s hand resting on him. He stared at it - metal and polymer doing a decent impression of human anatomy - as a tear broke loose and slid down his temple. His eyes scanned Takashi’s scarred and bent body, and came to rest on the tired, old version of a face that had once been young and beautiful. Staring at the living proof of thirty years of pain loaded, cocked, and aimed in his direction.

“I guess I’m just turning into you.”

Takashi touched Shiro’s forehead and, when he didn’t flinch away from the cold metal, smoothed his forelock out of his face. He summoned all his conviction to tell him, “I’m not going to let that happen.”

“You’re doing a pretty shit job so far,” Shiro snapped. But he immediately sighed and added, “Sorry. Not your fault. I’ve just had a bad day. Worst of my life, actually, by a long shot.”

Takashi screwed up his nerve to offer, “You want to talk about it?”

”No.”

“You want to talk about something else, to keep your mind off it?”

Shiro considered for a moment before saying decisively, “I want to talk about Keith.”

“Okay?”

“What happened to him?”

Takashi wrinkled his brow in concern. Maybe Shiro had hit his head harder than they’d thought. “He’s over there, remember?”

“No, not him,” said Shiro heavily. “Your Keith.”

Takashi froze. He knew he should lie, or find a way to deflect, but the question had picked the scab off a wound so gaping and deep it had never stopped bleeding. A pain just as fresh and a loss just as acute as Shiro’s missing arm.

“He died.”

Shiro closed his eyes as he absorbed the words like a punch to the gut. “Did he close his loop?” he asked. Takashi could understand the vain hope. The technology to send someone back was still decades away. If Keith had looped, that meant he’d gotten at least that long to live the circular life he’d already made his peace with.

Takashi stared at the sleeping form on the bench. “He didn’t make it that long.”

“When?” Shiro begged. “How?”

Takashi’s memories roiled like a stormy sea. The more foreknowledge Shiro had, the more it affected the choices he would make and the remaining possible outcomes. “You already know more than you should.”

“Tell me enough so I can stop it!” He was trying to sound commanding, but his voice was high and hoarse with exhaustion and he wasn’t even strong enough to lift his remaining arm.

Takashi combed his fingers through Shiro’s hair until he settled. “You don’t need to worry about that. I’ll stop it. That’s why I’m here.”

“Nothing else matters,” said Shiro pleadingly. “I lost the shop, my savings, the plane - okay, fine. Even my fucking arm. I can deal with that. But I can’t lose him.”

“I know. Believe me, I know.”

Shiro closed his eyes and laid his head back, trying to get comfortable on the narrow cot. After a while he was so still and his breathing was so regular that Takashi thought he’d fallen asleep. It was a surprise when he suddenly muttered with a groan, “Can you do me a favor? Can you punch me right in the face? Just hard enough to knock me back out for a while.”

Takashi couldn’t help but laugh. “I wonder if breaking my own jaw would count as a paradox.”

Luckily, they didn’t have to find out, because Allura reappeared soon after to check on Shiro. She adjusted the little pump attached to the transfusion line and injected another dose of morphine into his IV. Soon he was asleep again, and Takashi passed the night watching over him.

* * *

The Underground was just as Takashi remembered it. Somehow both cozy and ominous, meticulous in its chaos, claustrophobic and yet much bigger than it had first seemed. The dim hallways and frightening operating theater were only the front area. Deeper into the complex was a warren of tunnels which winded through and between the city streets above, creating a landscape all its own. Some areas, like Allura’s medical wing and Pidge’s lab, were reinforced and finished with cement walls and electrical wiring. Most, though, simply had stick framing with walls of ancient brick or plain dirt; these areas were rustic but surprisingly comfortable. They included a kitchen, several storage areas, as well as a couple of dormitories. On the outskirts, uniform halls gave way to crumbling infrastructure with fallen ceilings and pipes bursting through barriers. Hidden caches in the ruins revealed relics of these tunnels’ original purpose - secret avenues for drug running and human trafficking from well over a century ago.

“I thought the old Underground was only under Pioneer Square,” Keith had mused when Pidge first showed them to their quarters. “Aren’t we north of there?”

“That’s only the part that was restored for tourists back in the seventies,” said Pidge. “There are miles of tunnels and rooms that no one knows about anymore. A lot of them are caved in or inaccessible, and even if you can get to them they aren’t safe. But I found an unmapped entrance a few years back and have been rebuilding this area ever since.”

“Rebuilding” was an understatement. From that one entrance, Pidge had dug out and restored nearly two city blocks worth of tunnels. She’d exposed more entrances as she went - sidewalk grates and basement trap doors and access hatches. Some, she’d sealed off. Others, she’d camouflaged so people wouldn’t wander into her ever-expanding lair. She and Allura were nearly undetectable from the outside, with every door and vent meticulously protected. A self-contained plumbing system allowed them to stay cut off from the city water, top-of-the-line clean generators provided an independent power source, and an expensive system of air recyclers and fans kept the labyrinth cool and dry despite it being basically an elaborate tomb.

In the weeks that followed their arrival, Takashi found himself making a home in the common rooms and neutral areas of the complex. Pidge had assigned him a room to share with Shiro and Keith but, while it was spacious enough with three beds and an attached bathroom, Shiro was still in recovery and Takashi couldn’t bear to witness it. Their shared memory was burden enough.

Besides, Shiro had Keith to take care of him. They barely left one another’s side in those weeks. As painful as that time had been for Takashi back when he was in Shiro’s place, he cherished it for bringing him closer to Keith. In his loop, it was when he’d finally emerged from the haze of pain and despair, fresh with the knowledge of how fragile their lives were, that he’d confessed his feelings for the first time.

So for now Takashi kept his distance and kept one eye on his memories as the past unfolded, waiting for it to play out again. Shiro wouldn’t retain much about this time besides a heavy cloud of confusion and hopelessness, which mean Takashi didn’t either. But he looked forward to that first kiss. He would surely remember that, no matter the circumstances.

At Allura’s request, Takashi also avoided the set of rooms that made up the hospital. More patients came in and out of that area during the course of his stay, and their hosts were adamant that the groups of guests remain separate. No one else needed to stay for as long as Shiro. Most were quickly patched up and sent on their way, though Takashi did overhear Allura bemoaning one who came in after falling under the wheels of a caravan, too far gone for her to save. Takashi wasn’t sure what they did with the body.

He kept his distance from the entrances where Pidge received deliveries. He kept his distance from the storage rooms after Allura chased him away in the first week. Feeling as though there were very few places to spend his time that weren’t oppressively lonely, Takashi wound up in Pidge’s lab on most days.

The lab was vast compared to most of the rooms in the Underground, and the whole space was cluttered with projects and components. A broken ventilator machine from the hospital stood against one wall, waiting to be repaired. A weapons locker held more pistols like the one Pidge carried, as well as several other models of firearm that Takashi had never seen anywhere else. He suspected their tech was as improvised as the structure for his old plane. Most of the things in here were practical, either for defense or for medical application, but there were also machines and amalgamations dotted throughout the chaos that seemed to serve no purpose other than experimentation or maybe even art.

Today, Pidge’s project was Takashi’s arm. Or rather, his and Shiro’s arms. Allura had claimed the wingback chair in the corner, which left Takashi to perch on one of the metal stools next to Pidge’s bench. Pidge stood, as she always did when working, the better to flit manically around her project and attack it from every angle.

She had set up Takashi’s arm on the workbench, its panels open so it looked like a deconstruction of itself, screws and fastenings loosened in places Takashi hadn’t even been aware existed in all his decades of using it. He found himself unable to look at it in that state for too long. This arm had become a part of him and seeing it laid open was almost like seeing his own muscle and bone exposed.

Takashi focused on flexing his left hand as Pidge poked around in his artificial anatomy, comparing it to the second arm on her bench. It was much more rudimentary and unfinished, mostly just a framework with some of the major muscle groups attached. The hand was a pile of loosely-arranged components and the finer functions hadn’t been added yet. Pidge finished inspecting Takashi’s arm, then hunched over and started replicating its triceps attachment on the new one.

“When you made this for me,” Takashi mused, “you didn’t copy from anything. Now the new arm only exists the way it does because mine existed first. Doesn’t seem right.”

Pidge sighed. “Could you stop trying to make time travel make sense? Your very existence is a paradox. Besides, it’s faster to copy this design than to engineer a new one myself, and it’s not stealing because it was my design in the first place.”

“I wonder if you would have made the same arm if you hadn’t had the chance to look at mine.”

“Of course I wouldn’t,” said Pidge. “This timeline is already different from yours. From the moment you arrived, things started changing on a quantum level. Nothing is the same.”

In the midst of her working, an alarm on Pidge’s smartwatch began to beep. She flinched, turned so Takashi couldn’t see it, and tapped at the screen.

“What is it?” said Takashi.

“Nothing,” said Pidge, too quickly. “Uh, stay here a second. I’ll be right back.”

“Wait!” Takashi sputtered as Pidge left the room. “At least put my arm back together first!” He couldn’t move like this, or he’d risk the whole thing falling to pieces.

“Right back!” Pidge repeated as she disappeared down the hallway.

Takashi sighed. “Right back” could mean anywhere from a couple of minutes to an hour. This wouldn’t be the first time Pidge had left him stranded in the middle of her work. Takashi didn’t know what the alarms meant, but she was certainly attentive to them. Whenever they sounded, Pidge got a concerned look on her face and jumped to respond. That just meant Takashi would have to get comfortable until she returned.

Allura had been so quiet that Takashi almost forgot he wasn’t alone in the room until she snapped her book closed. He turned to find her looking at him intently. He felt exposed, and wasn’t sure whether it was more impolite to stare back at her or to pretend not to notice her attention. Finally, she sighed and said, “You don’t remember me, do you?”

Takashi tried to explain, not for the first time. “Kind of. I know who you are, but the memories from my previous loop are all jumbled…”

“No,” Allura cut him off with a wave of her hand. “That’s not what I meant.”

She waited, perhaps giving him time to think of where they’d met before. Takashi barely even remembered Allura from his previous loop. There, she had been quiet and serious in her care for him as he recovered after losing his arm. Later, as they’d spent more time together outside the hospital, he’d found her to be bubbly and friendly with a deep current of sadness running beneath the surface. She didn’t seem much different this time around. Takashi paused for a moment, but came up with nothing, shaking his head apologetically.

“My father was a state senator when I was a little girl,” she finally said. “He used to bring his slat bike into the city for mods and repairs. Your father ran his favorite shop. You were always there, helping him. We spoke a few times.”

Takashi sat, stunned, for what felt like a long time. Allura waited patiently as he struggled to recall so far back, but finally he dredged up a fragment of a memory. “You sat behind your dad on the bike. You wore a pink helmet.”

Allura smiled. “That’s me.”

“You never told me.”

“I imagine you had other things to worry about at the time,” said Allura. “I wouldn’t bother Shiro with this conversation. He has his recovery to focus on. But here you are, and it seemed worth mentioning. Not very many people remember my father, now.”

Takashi nodded. “My dad used to get excited when yours was scheduled to come in to the shop. He liked working on his bike. It had a bunch of high-end customizations, and your dad was really passionate about it. Some people would just come in and demand we make it faster, but your dad actually knew his stuff and could have a conversation about engines. We liked him. I remember him.”

Allura put her book down to dab her eyes with her sleeves. “Thank you,” she said.

“What happened? No offense, but your family had enough money to stay above the downtown gang warfare. What are you doing here?”

“I don’t know if you followed politics back then, but my parents were the Syndicate’s main opposition in the senate. Haggar didn’t have the influence she has now, but even then my father saw how ambitious she was. While the other gang leaders blew their money on frivolities, Haggar bought herself politicians, coroners, and police captains. She wasn’t above the law yet, but she soon would be. My parents proposed legislation that would have cut her feet out from under her, before she became too powerful to touch. If they’d succeeded, the Syndicate as you know it today would not exist.”

Another memory returned to Takashi, this one from years after his father had died and the regulars had stopped coming to the shop. A single news story had dominated the airwaves for a month or so before fading into obscurity: the home invasion and murder of a prominent politician and his wife. There were no leads, and eventually the unsolved case had faded from public memory. Takashi hadn’t made the connection back then, but now it was obvious. “Haggar had them assassinated.”

“That’s right,” said Allura quietly. “It taught me an important lesson. My parents tried to beat Haggar within the systems our government already has in place. But Haggar won because she wasn’t playing with the same set of rules. So I’m not following the rules anymore, either. If I might die either way, then with the time I have I will take the fight to her door, in terms she can’t ignore.”

Takashi gestured with his one working arm at the claustrophobic cave around them. “Is that what you’re doing here? Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate that you’re here to patch up poor bastards like me, but I can’t imagine you’re much more than an annoyance to Haggar.”

“For now,” said Allura with a smile.

“What does that mean?”

Allura closed her eyes and took a deep breath, her hands clasped over the spine of the book in her lap. When her eyes opened, they were steely with resolve. “After my parents were killed, I was lost. I dropped out of my medical internship and came home. As you said, I had money, and I poured it into finding a way to bring Haggar and her Syndicate to justice. But the deeper I dove into her world, the more I understood that I didn’t have a chance alone. Seattle doesn’t need a savior. It needs to rise up and take itself back.”

Allura went on, “But I didn’t know Seattle. Not that part of it. My parents’ deaths upended my whole world, but to the people of the city they were a drop of suffering in the ocean. People die every day around here without ever making the headlines. Why should anyone have listened to me, when they’d known all along about the cruelty and unfairness I’d only just discovered? If I was going to be a part of this struggle, I had to get in the trenches with everyone else. So, I sold everything. And I gave all the money to Pidge.”

“Why her?”

A slow smile spread across Allura’s face. “She’s exactly the kind of person who will win this war. She grew up on these streets; she’s seen the Syndicate’s terrible grip on the city firsthand. But instead of letting it make her bitter or afraid, she pours all her hurt and anger into her work and transforms it into something useful. I believe in her.”

“You love her.”

Allura’s smile grew. “Isn’t that the same thing?”

Takashi couldn’t help but smile in return. Allura’s faith in Pidge reminded him of how he felt about Keith. “You didn’t answer my question, though. How does any of this stop Haggar?”

“Do you think all we’re doing here is patching people up and sending them on their way?” Allura asked. “We’ve been doing this long enough that Seattle knows our names. They know we’re safe, and they know we hate the Syndicate. It was enough to attract you here when you needed help, just as it attracts all sorts of people with all sorts of backgrounds and skills. We keep in contact with them all. Individually, none of us can stand up against the Syndicate. But with enough time, we’ll build a coalition that can bring Haggar down.”

Takashi wanted to ask more, but just then Pidge came back in. She looked frustrated, but she took a deep breath to center herself before diving back into her work. Takashi couldn’t help but look at her differently now. These were not two women hiding out in a bunker, as he’d once thought. They were the hub of the resistance.

* * *

_Keith died on the hottest night of summer._

_His blood followed the cracks in the sidewalk, branching and flowing like the veins it had spilled from. He was heavy. Shiro (he was still Shiro, back then) should have been able to carry him easily - how many times had he spun him around in a tight embrace, or laughed while hoisting him over his shoulder? But now Keith was in his arms and Shiro couldn’t seem to pick his own knees up off the pavement._

_“Keep running.”_

_They’d run as fast and as far as they could. Four continents, dozens of cities, countless ports of call. They’d tried to hide off the grid, or blend into small communities, or disappear into the crowds of great metropolises. Nothing worked. Haggar always found them eventually._

_The plane was long gone. They traveled by commercial airline, chartered puddle-jumpers, trains, hitched rides. They walked. They assumed names and forged documents. They learned new languages and invented family ties. They got good at lying. They didn’t stay anywhere for long._

_It had been like living half a life. They were always looking over their shoulders, trusting no one, and pulling up any roots they’d managed to put down over and over again. Being together was the only thing that made it worth it. They savored every moment of joy they managed to wring out of the years of paranoia and isolation._

_“Keep running.”_

_Now the night air tasted bitter and dry as Shiro gasped it in, unable to catch his breath. Two druids lay nearby, motionless, their limbs twisted like broken dolls in the position they’d fallen. Those black coats always reappeared in their lives, no matter how well they hid. Sometimes they managed to flee before the druids closed in. Sometimes they danced around each other like hunters around prey. Sometimes, like this time, there was no warning until gunfire pierced the night and sent them scrambling for a new shelter._

_The firefight spilled out into the street. Bullets in the dark. When the smoke cleared, the druids were dead. Keith was doubled over, shaking, blood leaking through his fingers. There are no good gunshot wounds, but there are bad ones. This was a bad one._

_Blood on the sidewalk, baking into a scab. Enough that Shiro could smell the coppery tang of it. He tried again to rise, only to bruise his knees as he collapsed. He was so weak, and his lungs wouldn’t hold on to air, and Keith was so heavy._

_Someone was shouting in the darkness down the block. Footsteps coming closer. Maybe a bystander, maybe more druids. They couldn’t stay here, but still Shiro knelt, pinned to the street by the weight of what he’d lost there._

_Keith’s eyes were the only things about him that still looked alive. They stayed fixed on Shiro’s face, steely and focused even as his body failed and died. “Keep running,” he whispered, and then he was gone._

_Blood on the sidewalk. Shouting getting louder. Footsteps getting closer. Keith was still heavy, and Shiro was weaker than ever before, but that didn’t seem to matter anymore. Nothing did._

_Shiro didn’t know what to do, so he did what Keith had told him._

_He held tighter to what was left of the love of his life, stood up, and ran._

Takashi woke quietly. He’d learned long ago not to scream or thrash when waking up from nightmares. He simply opened his eyes and let the panic squeeze his insides. He’d managed not to think about that night for some time, but the dream had brought it back in vivid, nauseating detail. That memory was a painful echo of the past, but also a terrible warning for the future. The fact that he could still remember Keith’s death, while so many of his other memories swirled in indistinct clouds of probability, meant the events of that night were still possible. Likely, even. Maybe unavoidable.

The lights were off in Pidge’s lab, but the space was still illuminated by the colored sensors and displays from dozens of machines. Pidge’s projects watched over him while he slept, having fallen asleep on Allura’s armchair in the corner.

He tried to go back to sleep, but the nightmare was still there on the backs of his eyelids, waiting for him. Standing and stretching took his mind off it a little, but also made him aware of every crick in his neck and ache in his hips and back. He used to be able to sleep anywhere, but he was far too old to get away with it now. Dozing off in the armchair was a decision he’d be paying for all day long.

A digital clock on the workbench showed a quarter past three in the morning. At least he’d have a few hours to shake off the dream before anyone else was awake. Takashi smoothed the wrinkles out of his clothes and ruffled his hair until it felt like it was falling the right way, then tiptoed out into the dimly-lit hallway.

He went directly to check in on Keith. He couldn’t help it. Though Takashi knew it was just a dream, that it had happened a long time ago (or hadn’t happened yet), he couldn’t get his heart to slow down until he’d seen Keith’s face and watched his chest rise and fall a few times.

A quick peek turned into a stare, and Takashi found himself lingering in the doorway a little longer than he should have. There was a time when, seeing Keith so relaxed and vulnerable like this, he would have carefully crawled into bed with him. With Keith in his arms, he probably would have been able to get back to sleep. Fighting the urge, Takashi nudged the door, widening the strip of light and casting a beam onto Keith’s face. Keith grunted and stirred, burrowing deeper into his pillow. Takashi quickly and quietly pulled the door closed. Keith didn’t belong to him anymore, or yet, or at all. It was enough that he existed. It was enough that he was alive.

Takashi continued down the hallway to the kitchen, motion sensors brightening the lights for him as he went. Pidge had done everything possible to make this place seem like a home, but it was hard for Takashi to forget that he was underground. His frame was too tall for the ceilings here, and the lack of sunlight had quickly thrown off his sleep patterns. He longed for the sky. Those were the times he could remember being happiest - right after they’d left Seattle, flying his little Cessna high over the mountains, Keith’s hand on his thigh, and neither of them aware how close Haggar was already on their heels.

When he reached the kitchen, the lights were already on. Someone else was awake. He would have retreated back to the lab if he hadn’t been so hungry. Setting his jaw, he turned the corner and stuck his head through the doorway.

Shiro was sitting at the kitchen table, eating peanut butter out of a huge jar. The spoon was halfway to his lips when he noticed Takashi. He froze, mouth hanging open, before clearing his throat and lowering his hand to the table.

Takashi’s momentum stalled halfway through the door. He’d been ready to duck in, grab some food, and duck back out, but seeing his double had stopped him in his tracks. Shiro looked tired. The hoodie he was wearing, like most of the secondhand clothes Allura had offered him to replace the outfit shredded by his crash, was too tight and one sleeve hung empty at his side. The missing arm made him look unbalanced. All these decades later, Takashi couldn’t completely get used to his body looking like that.

Still, he felt a swell of love and tenderness for his younger self. He’d been there, at that table, eating that peanut butter, in the small hours of the morning when no one else was awake. Lonely and hurting and feeling like he wasn’t all there. In a lot of ways, he’d never escaped.

“What are you doing up so early?” said Takashi.

Shiro grunted, “Nightmare.”

“Hey, me too.” Takashi pushed through the awkwardness and the doorway to forage some food out of the cupboard, though he knew the pickings were sparse. Leaving the bunker was risky, so Pidge and Allura only went on food runs every two weeks, and there was rarely anything fresh. After rifling through the few boxes and canisters, Takashi gave up, grabbed a spoon out of the drawer, and dipped it into the open jar in front of Shiro.

He sat down on the other side of the table, and the two of them licked their spoons together in awkward silence. When Shiro’s was clean, he went for another scoop, but the jar was light enough now that his spoon just pushed it across the table. He tried again, scooting the jar back and forth a couple of times, and looked about to lose his patience when Takashi reached over and held it still.

Shiro glanced at him suspiciously before mumbling, “Thanks,” and digging his spoon in.

“No problem,” said Takashi. “Hold the jar between your knees.”

“Yeah. Yeah, obviously that would… I just…” Shiro gestured helplessly with his peanut-butter-laden spoon. Takashi understood. Things that used to be easy for him now required problem-solving, and sometimes frustration came faster than ingenuity. Shiro must have seen the recognition on Takashi’s face, because he sighed and finished, “You know.”

“I do.” The silence broken, Takashi couldn’t hold back his curiosity. He asked, as gently as he could, “So, how are things with Keith?” By this time, in his own loop, he and Keith were already together. He had to know why it was taking so much longer this time.

Shiro closed his fist around the handle of his spoon, tensed and guarded against ridicule. But then he looked up at Takashi’s knowing face. He dropped the spoon back into the jar and pushed it away. “The same,” he answered.

“The same as what?”

“You know what I mean,” said Shiro. “There’s been a distance between us since he joined the Syndicate.”

Takashi nodded. He remembered it well. “You’re still friends, but he doesn’t let you in the way he used to.”

“Yeah... I get it. His life took him in a different direction from me. I don’t understand it, but I never blamed him for it. Ever since he was a kid, he’s had to do a lot of things to survive. I’ve tried to keep reaching out, and he’d always say he was happy to see me, but then he’d pull away again.”

Takashi bit his tongue. It wasn’t his place to offer explanations. He’d meddled enough. But if the misunderstandings between Keith and himself had been frustrating to live through, they were excruciating to watch.

Shiro went on, “When Keith showed up at my window that night, I thought things would change. He’s not with the Syndicate anymore. We could be close, like we used to be. But he’s still holding back.”

“He’s been with you all this time…”

Shiro shook his head with a sad smile. “Watching over me, taking care of me, listening to me complain. He’s been a perfect friend these last couple of weeks, but nothing more. We used to be more. I thought we could be more.”

It didn’t make sense. What had changed, to make this loop play out so differently than the last? Takashi knew the answer, and it made guilt twist in his guts like a knife. “I feel like I made this more complicated for you,” he said.

“Yeah, you did,” said Shiro, not bothering to spare his feelings. “I’m not going to lie: it stings even more to know he apparently didn’t have a problem… doing things… with you.”

“It wasn’t like that. I…”

Shiro held up his hand. “I really don’t want to know the details.”

Takashi was shamed into silence for a moment or two, and he sucked the last of the peanut butter from his spoon while trying to avoid Shiro’s eyes. But eventually indignation won out over embarrassment, and he said, “I understand why you’re upset. I would be too, in your shoes. But you have to see that being jealous of me is no different from being jealous of yourself.”

“You’re not me,” Shiro growled, recoiling.

“That’s not what I meant. I haven’t forgotten my promise to you - I’m not going to let you become like me. But I am one version of you. We’re two branches off the same tree.”

Shiro listened sullenly, then snapped, “What are you trying to say?”

“I’m saying if you think Keith would care about any geezer old enough to be his grandfather who snatched him off the street, then you’re dumber than I ever remember being. If he has any interest in me, it’s only because he’s in love with you.”

It was strange watching the emotions play out on Shiro’s face. Takashi wasn’t used to seeing his own eyes go blank with confusion, his own mouth set determinedly, his own composure wobble as he fought against vain hope. Wanting to protect himself from heartbreak, but wanting even more desperately for Takashi to be telling the truth. “You were together? In the future?”

“Yes,” said Takashi. He almost said more, but stopped himself. Instead, he reached into his pocket and let the links of the necklace chain wadded up in there run between his fingers.

Shiro leaned forward eagerly. “How did you do it?”

Takashi rolled his eyes. “Just talk to him!”

“I’ve tried,” Shiro sighed. “For years. You must remember how good he is at avoiding that conversation.”

Throwing his hands in the air, Takashi groaned, “Then just kiss him! You’re making this way more complicated than it needs to be.”

“But it is complicated. Don’t try to pretend it’s not. Keith hasn’t had control over his own life in years. Maybe ever. People are always making demands on him, and he’s always managing the threats that come with those demands. Haggar is only the most obvious example. If I kissed him, sure, he’d probably kiss me back. But it would be because I demanded it, and he would have to weigh the threat of losing me as a friend.” Shiro smiled sadly, slumping in his chair so his hoodie bunched up around his shoulders and made him look awkward and small. “I’ve been chasing him for so long. I don’t want to corner him and catch him. I want him to stop running.”

Takashi scooped a fresh dollop of peanut butter and dragged his teeth through it, letting them catch on the edge of the spoon. Maybe he hadn’t been so dumb back then, after all.

He pushed the jar back across the table and held it still for Shiro to retrieve and refill his spoon. Shiro waved it in a tiny salute before bringing it to his mouth.

The night was long and sleepless but, for once, it wasn’t lonely.

* * *

Three weeks after their arrival, just when they’d started to settle into a tense, delicate new way of life, Allura summoned Shiro back to her clinic. His new arm was complete, and it was time to start attaching it. Of course Keith came too, never leaving Shiro’s side. And Takashi surprised himself by joining as well. He’d told himself he didn’t want anything to do with this whole process (going through it once had been enough) but over time his aversion was slowly overcome by his sense of obligation. His younger self, in some ways, needed just as much protection as Keith did.

Takashi felt jumpy as he walked into the clinic again. Even thirty years on, those memories lingered. The lights were harsh here compared to the rest of the complex, and the antiseptic smell made him nauseous. The ceilings were even lower in the exam room than in the warren of hallways, making it feel that much more claustrophobic. He hovered in the corner, trying to control his breathing and stay out of the way.

Shiro sat on the exam table, looking as uncomfortable as Takashi felt while Pidge and Allura flitted around him, discussing his treatment plan. Today’s exam was only to map the neural pathways so Allura could plan for the real surgery later in the week. But no matter the procedure Takashi remembered how vulnerable it felt to sit on that table in a flimsy hospital gown.

Shiro flinched away from the cold metal as they held the prosthetic up to the stump of his arm and adjusted the fit. Keith, standing at his side, moved as if to take Shiro’s hand reassuringly. But he caught himself before Shiro noticed, and dropped his hand back to his side.

Instead, Keith muttered, “You okay?”

“Yeah,” said Shiro. “I just want to get this over with.”

“Same here!” Pidge chimed in. She placed the prosthetic back on the table and untangled the many wires and cables coursing from the socket. “As soon as your new arm is operational, you’ll be able to get out of my house.”

Allura squinted as she concentrated on attaching tiny electrodes to Shiro’s shoulder with adhesive pads. “Stop antagonizing my patient, dearest,” she mumbled.

“I’m not antagonizing,” said Pidge, sorting the other ends of Allura’s wires and hooking them into the prosthetic. “I’m just being realistic. They’re throwing off all my projections for water usage and food consumption, not to mention all three of them are giant targets on our backs for the Syndicate. They can’t stay here forever.”

“We paid our way,” Keith pointedly reminded her.

Pidge waved her hand impatiently, a tiny screwdriver flopping back and forth in her grip. “Sure, sure. I’m not kicking you out, at least not yet. But you should be thinking about this stuff, too. Seattle isn’t safe for you. Shiro will be all healed up in a couple more weeks, and if you’re smart you’ll get out of town as fast as you can. Make a fist.”

“Huh?” said Shiro, doing a double-take at her final request.

“A fist,” Allura repeated, patting the electrodes on his skin. “Don’t overthink it, just imagine you’re closing your fingers.”

Shiro furrowed his brow, and the pinky finger and ring finger of the prosthetic bent toward its palm. Allura moved two of the electrodes by millimeters and urged him to try again. Four fingers curled into a weak fist this time, but the thumb didn’t move.

As Allura continued to dial in the connections on the prosthetic, preparing for the surgery that would permanently attach them, Takashi couldn’t help but remind the others, “We can’t just get out of town. I already told you how that ends.”

Keith, who had been staring nervously at Allura’s hands where they prodded and pinched at Shiro’s anatomy, suddenly looked up. “No, Pidge is right. Seattle is too dangerous for us right now. We should fall back.”

“If you leave the city now,” said Takashi, “there will always be a reason not to return. And this loop will play out the same as the last one.”

Pidge handed Allura a purple marker to label the locations of the electrodes on Shiro’s skin. “If you’re staying, I hope you have a lead on some other underground bunker to hide in. You won’t last long wandering around on the street. Okay, can you move your thumb now?”

Shiro closed his thumb over the fist and wiggled all five fingers experimentally as he said, “None of us would need to hide if we could destroy the Syndicate.”

Allura flinched, marking her own hand with purple instead of Shiro’s shoulder. Pidge just laughed darkly and told him, “Good luck with that. Seems like tangling with the Syndicate worked out really well for you last time. Hey, if you get your other arm blown off, come back and we’ll do this all over again! Okay, move your wrist now.”

The wrist twitched weakly. Allura scooted two of the electrodes until the movement became strong and smooth. “No one takes on the Syndicate and survives,” she gently advised.

Watching Shiro’s prosthetic moving on the table, dangling from its leads and wires, was making Takashi feel strangely disconnected from his own body. He bent his mechanical wrist reflexively to shake off the distraction and replied to Allura, “You seemed to think it was possible.”

“That’s different. We’ve been preparing for years, and we have years to go before we’re ready to make our move.”

“We don’t have years,” said Shiro. “But if we worked together…”

Allura cut him off with a terse, “Focus, please! That’s good. Now move it side to side.” The hand on the table waved obediently.

But Takashi wasn’t about to let this go. “If you have the resources to fight the Syndicate, how can you stay holed up down here? Do you know how many people will suffer and die while you wonder whether you’re ready?”

“HEY!” Pidge snapped, looking close to throwing her screwdriver at Takashi’s head. “You think we haven’t thought about that? We learned the hard way that there’s no quick and easy end to this war. The last time we tried, we lost people we cared about, and the Witch still got away. Now we’re being careful. We’ve spent years building our network, collecting contacts, stockpiling supplies. We’re not going to throw it all away on your half-baked plan. If you attack the Syndicate, you’re on your own. Now, bend your damn elbow.”

“Why are you yelling at _me?_ ” Shiro muttered as the prosthetic flexed obediently beside him. Other than that small protest, the argument seemed to fizzle and Pidge and Allura worked in peace for a minute or two.

Keith had been relatively quiet, leaning against the wall and listening to the debate. Only now did he say softly, “Maybe it’s for the best.”

“What do you mean?” said Takashi.

Keith shifted uncomfortably. “We can’t attack the Syndicate with no backup, so maybe it’s better if we run. Okay, things will probably turn out bad in the end. But we could get years of freedom before that happens, even decades if we’re careful. If we stand our ground now, we’ll just die.”

“We won’t die. We could do it...” Shiro tried to protest, but Allura swatted him for losing his focus on the procedure.

“Besides,” Keith added, “even if we win, we lose.”

“How so?” This time, Shiro dodged the swat when Allura tried to shush him.

Keith sighed. “Okay. Say we beat the Syndicate. Tear down the Columbia Center, destroy their records, kill every last one of them. Whatever it takes so they can never find us. They never take you, so you never get looped back. Then a looped version of you can’t exist. So, what happens to Takashi?”

Shiro looked like he was about to respond, but Allura ended the conversation with a firm, “That’s it! Everyone who’s not my patient, out! I let you in here so you could keep Shiro company, not so you could distract him while I’m trying to work!”

“But…” Keith tried.

Allura wasn’t hearing it. “Out!”

They retreated from the room. Keith, reluctantly. Takashi, gratefully. With nothing more to do in the cold, sterile hallway of the clinic, they headed back to the main living area to wait. Takashi gathered his thoughts as they went, and by the time they arrived in front of the door to Keith’s room he had something to say.

“Keith,” he called, running forward to block the door so Keith couldn’t retreat into the bedroom. “Listen. If you and Shiro understand my warning, but decide that running is really what you want to do, fine. Maybe things will be different this time. I hope they are. But one thing you cannot do is make me a priority in that decision. You need to focus on staying alive. I can’t believe you’ve been wasting a single second worrying about what’s going to happen to me after all this.”

Keith didn’t try to escape, but he wouldn’t meet Takashi’s eyes. “Is it so wrong to want to keep you both alive?”

“Yes,” said Takashi, so forcefully it made Keith flinch. “I’m not a part of this. He is your future. I am nothing.”

“You’re not nothing!” said Keith with a huff before surging forward to kiss him.

Takashi couldn’t stop himself from kissing back. He’d tried so hard to master his feelings. Even before traveling through time, he’d prepared himself to see Keith again without giving away how much he still yearned for him. His loss of control in the abandoned garage had been unacceptable - it had only led to confusion for Keith and heartbreak for his own younger self. Since then, and especially since his late-night conversation with Shiro, he’d kept a respectful distance. But this was too much to resist. This might not be his Keith, not his time or his reality, but this moment was sweet, and innocent, and it made Takashi feel like a young man again.

It took all his resolve to gently push Keith off him. He shook his head and waited for the emotional lump in his throat to subside before saying, “What are you doing, Keith? I’m not the me you should be kissing.”

Keith backed away, instantly on the defensive. “You started it,” he said flatly.

“Yeah, I did,” Takashi sighed. “Because I’m a dirty old man who couldn’t keep his hands to himself for long enough to have a simple conversation. That blowjob wasn’t exactly a ringing endorsement of my good judgement.”

That actually made Keith laugh in spite of himself, and Takashi glowed to see the brief smile flash across his face. Keith replied, “Maybe. But I’m glad you did it. I’ve wanted to be with him - with you - that way for years. At least I got to experience it once.”

“It can happen any time you want it,” said Takashi, gesturing helplessly toward the room Keith and Shiro had been sharing (platonically, for some reason) for the past weeks. “He’s right there. Just talk to him.”

But Keith just shook his head. “I’m no good for him. He keeps trying to save me, but I’m just dragging him down with me. And I’m not strong enough to leave, so the best I can do is hang around and try to undo some of the damage I’ve done. I owe him that much.”

A knife through the heart would have hurt less. He’d always known Keith had a low opinion of himself, but hearing it out loud was unbearable. “You’re wrong.”

“Am I? All he’s done is make my life better. All I’ve done is make his worse. If he gets too close to me, he’s going to end up…”

“Like me?” Takashi interrupted. That made Keith stop in his tracks. “I get it now. That’s why you don’t have a problem kissing me. You don’t have to worry about breaking something that’s already beyond repair.”

“That’s not it,” Keith protested. “You’ve just known me for longer. If you still want me, at least you know what you’re getting into.”

Even though he knew the others were still busy in the clinic, Takashi glanced up and down the hallway to make sure they were alone before allowing himself to reach out and cup Keith’s beautiful face in his hands. Keith melted into his touch, eyes fluttering, and Takashi felt a surge of love so powerful that it took all his resolve not to kiss him again. “I still want you. Nothing could make me stop wanting you.” Keith tried to pull him closer, but Takashi reluctantly let go and backed away. ”Give him a chance to show you that he feels the same way.”

“What if he doesn’t? He thinks I’m so good, and I don’t know why. What if I let him in, and he figures out how wrong he’s been about me?”

“Keith…” Takashi couldn’t even find the words. Instead, he reached into his pocket and fished out the chain he’d stuffed in there weeks ago. He’d missed the reassuring sensation of it around his neck all this time. Now he let the skin-warmed links run through his fingers as it untangled under its own weight, until the two rings strung onto it swung free. He handed it to Keith. And as Keith gathered the chain into his hand to catch the rings, inspecting first the heavy gold one and then the more delicate silver, Takashi watched his face change as he realized they were wedding bands.

“I love you,” said Takashi, so softly he was almost whispering. “I’ve loved you more every day since I met you. Even with everything that happened to us, I never regretted being with you. Not once. Don’t take this away from him. Don’t take it away from yourself.”

He tilted Keith’s chin up and kissed him gently, chastely. For the last time.

“Talk to him.”

Keith held the rings so tight that, when he finally handed them back, the imprint of two circles remained on the palm of his hand.

“I will.”


	4. I belong, I believe

The first day after Allura attached his prosthetic, Shiro’s arm was on fire. She promised the discomfort wouldn’t last long, that it was just due to irritation from the fresh nerve hookups. That it would soon feel as natural as his real arm. But with every twinge and jolt it sent into his body, Shiro resented the metal appendage hanging off his shoulder more.

He tried not to be angry at Allura, who’d flayed his nerves back open after they were almost healed. Or at Takashi, who’d told him it would be worth it. He tried especially hard not to be angry at Keith, who’d done nothing wrong at all. But his anger seemed to want to lash out in every direction that day, and he might have snapped at Keith once or twice. He was tired, and tired of being in pain.

Finally, he turned off the lights, lay in bed, and tried not to move.

Allura was right: by the next day, the burning of his fried nerves had dulled to a more comfortable pulsing buzz as his body got used to the new input. And Allura was wrong: it didn’t feel natural at all.

A week later and the prosthetic still felt alien to him. He was aware of its weight in a way he’d never noticed the weight of a real arm. It moved at his will, but on the tiniest of delays, the electronics reacting fractions of a second slower than a human nervous system. Not enough to matter, but enough to notice. And the strange haptic feedback of the prosthetic didn’t replace the sensation of a phantom limb, leaving him with the constant impression that he had too many arms while still missing something.

One evening, when Shiro finally found some time alone, he faced himself in the mirror mounted on the door of their little dormitory and slowly peeled off his shirt. The prosthetic was beautifully made, its facets gleaming and its joints sliding smooth as Shiro flexed and extended it over and over. Pidge had done a good job. But she hadn’t made him a new arm. She’d made him an arm-shaped sculpture and nailed it to his body.

Still, it was easier to look at the prosthetic than the flesh it was attached to. Allura had saved as much of his mangled arm as she could, even a short section of humerus, which meant his flesh became metal a few inches past his shoulder. But from that seam, a bramble of scars grew back up his deltoid. Even part of his back had been caught in the blast. After being pieced back together, his skin was full of deep divots and streaked with shiny raised smears where his anatomy had healed into the new, distorted shape the blunderbuss had carved it.

Shiro had never been vain, but he had liked his body. He wasn’t sure he could make himself like the body he saw in the mirror now. He wasn’t even sure he could convince himself it was still his.

A knock at the door made Shiro flinch as if he’d been caught spying. He grabbed a crumpled t-shirt off the bed and yanked it on, tugging the sleeve down far enough to hide the junction of the prosthetic. The only people who would bother knocking were Pidge and Allura, and he didn’t feel like greeting them half naked.

But it wasn’t either of them. It was Keith. He stood in the doorway, shoulders fallen and eyes downcast, looking as frightened and unsure as the day Shiro had pulled him off the stolen slat bike. His hand was raised, about to knock a second time on the door to his own room. It shook a little, then fell back to his side. His eyes didn’t leave the floor until Shiro asked, “What’s wrong?” and when Keith looked up they were bloodshot and sunken.

“I love you,” he said, each word sounding like it was being dragged out of his guts on fishhooks.

They stood frozen for a moment on opposite sides of the doorway. Then Shiro stepped aside and beckoned Keith in before closing and latching the door behind him. Whatever was about to happen, he was sure he didn’t want anyone walking in on them. His heart pounded fast enough to make him lightheaded as he turned back to face Keith.

“I’m sorry,” said Keith, a pained laugh bubbling up as he spoke. “I know this isn’t fair of me, to put this on you now. Maybe I should have told you sooner. Maybe I shouldn’t have told you at all. But it’s been eating me for years and Takashi told me to be honest with you and I don’t know how to do anything halfway, so here’s me being honest with you.”

Shiro held his as Keith took a deep breath before continuing.

“I know I didn’t become the man you wanted me to be.”

Shiro’s ribs twisted around his heart. Because Keith was right - Shiro had seen something dazzling in Keith from the first day they’d met, and he’d always wanted more for him than servitude and killing and the slow erosion of his soul that he’d found with the Syndicate. But it wasn’t Keith’s fault. The gap between his hopes for Keith and the crushing reality was a tragedy, not a betrayal. He wasn’t disappointed. Keith could never disappoint him. He had to know that by now, right?

Shiro managed to hold his tongue, and Keith went on, “I’ve never had much control of my life. Things just kind of happened to me. Even you. You came out of nowhere and changed everything. I was lucky that you took an interest in me at all, so I always tried not to ask for more. Just wanted to help you. Protect you. I’m sorry I didn’t do a better job.”

Tears were welling in Keith’s eyes. Shiro didn’t realize until he tasted salt that he was crying, too. This was wrong. It was Shiro who was lucky to have Keith in his life, not the other way around. How could Keith have gotten it so wrong all this time?

“You had a good thing going. You were safe before we met. You were going to get out of this town. Then I came along...”

“That’s not…”

“This is my fault…”

“No…”

“I tried so hard to keep you out of this. That’s why I joined the Syndicate in the first place. It was the only way I could keep them away from you. I was in so you could be out.”

Shiro took Keith’s face in his hands, surprising him into silence. He couldn’t keep watching Keith tear his heart out and throw it on the floor between them. This guilt went both ways.

“I don’t want to be out,” said Shiro, his voice rough as tears continued to fall. “If you’re in trouble, I want to be in it with you. If we get free and clear, I want to do that together, too.”

Keith gazed up at him, tears rolling down his cheeks into the creases between Shiro’s fingers. He gripped Shiro’s wrists like they were the only things keeping him upright.

“I’m sorry you ever felt like it was your job to protect me. You were a kid. If this was anyone’s fault, it was mine, for not getting both of us out of this place years ago. I could tell you were struggling, Keith, and I wanted so badly to help you, but you kept pulling away from me and I didn’t know what you needed. I should have fought harder for you. I should have told you every day how much I love you.”

And suddenly, Keith was tugging his wrists, moving in to kiss him. Shiro waited until Keith had completely closed the gap before pressing forward to answer him, their tears smearing on each other’s faces and the knots unraveling from both of their hearts. They clung to each other in a panicked, grasping embrace, as if either of them might slip away if the other didn’t hold him tight enough.

Their kissing became more frantic as the first heady rush subsided and a deep, long-denied hunger stirred inside. Keith’s fingernails raked Shiro’s back through the thin fabric of his shirt. Shiro’s hands slid from Keith’s face down his neck, his chest, his waist, his hips. For the first time, Shiro didn’t bother to suss out the difference between what his real hand felt and what his prosthetic told him. Keith was warm and soft and delicious, and to put hands on him, any hands at all, was a gift beyond imagining.

Shiro’s fingers slid under the hem of Keith’s shirt and found skin. Keith gasped. Something changed between them, that slight touch electrifying the air. They froze, panting, for a second or two, before Keith shrugged as Shiro pulled and the shirt went flying through the air.

They crashed back together, staggering as they fumbled with the buttons on each other’s pants. Shiro was too deep in Keith’s mouth to pull back and take a look at him, but he could feel him hard and hot against his leg as they both let their pants fall. Shiro managed to step out of his, kicking the cuffs off his ankles as he went, but Keith got tangled and tripped, taking Shiro down with him. They barely managed to direct their fall to the nearby mattress instead of toppling to the floor.

The only piece of clothing left between them was Shiro’s t-shirt, and Keith tugged at it from where he lay pinned under him. As the hem rode up his back past the first wisps of scars, Shiro felt himself tense up. It was stupid. Keith had been there through his whole recovery. He’d changed his bandages, even helped him shower. There was nothing under that shirt Keith hadn’t already seen. But still, the idea of being exposed like that made him remember what he’d seen in the mirror in graphic and exaggerated detail. That body that was not his body.

He could shove it to the back of his mind, if he tried. He could remind himself that Keith didn’t care. But he didn’t want to have to focus on that right now. He wanted all his attention spared for the way Keith was rolling his hips up as they kissed, grinding against Shiro’s thigh. He reached back and held Keith’s wrist to keep him from lifting the shirt any higher.

“Can…” he stammered, terrified of ruining the mood, “can I keep this on?”

Keith smoothed the shirt back down. “Of course,” he murmured. He pulled Shiro close to kiss him again, and when their lips met he arched off the bed to press their bodies together. “Of course.”

Their legs slotted together like they were made to fit. Shiro rocked their bodies with each kiss, bucking into Keith until moisture smeared their bellies where their cocks lay pressed between each other. Vaguely he wanted to pull back and savor the sight, to slow down, to pleasure Keith with his hands and his mouth. But that would mean ending this kiss, and he couldn’t make himself do that when it felt so good. His thrusting got faster as his control dissolved into passion, too far gone to stop, and even now urged on by Keith’s fingers digging into his scalp and the curve of his rear.

Keith came first. He buried his face in Shiro’s chest to stifle a scream as he jerked against him, shaking and moaning as a wet warmth coated both their groins. Shiro kept going. He kissed the whimpers off Keith’s lips as he rutted in the slick of his come until he joined him in ecstasy. Even when the aftershocks had faded they stayed twined around each other, panting, and still grinding their softening cocks together though the friction was just this side of painful.

It took time for their breathing to slow, and even more time before their grips loosened enough for them to make eye contact. The embarrassment and doubt Shiro had expected wasn’t there - Keith’s gaze held only warmth and trust. When they finally peeled off each other, disentangling their limbs to lie in a more comfortable embrace, their combined come had grown sticky where it cooled on their skin.

For once, Shiro’s new arm didn’t feel like it was weighing him down. Looped around Keith, holding him close, he could almost believe it was a part of himself.

Keith was glorious - dewy with sweat, face flushed, limbs slack like all the tension and anxiety had been pounded out of him. He looked at Shiro with hazy, half-lidded eyes. But even though he was smiling, he looked pensive.

“You okay?”

“Yeah,” Keith replied with a shy smile. “That was amazing, Shiro. It’s just… I’ve been dreaming about this for so long, and it happened so fast. Shouldn’t we have taken our time?”

Time. Takashi’s warning made Shiro’s back prickle. Even now, Keith’s death was stalking closer. As soon as it began, the clock for their love was ticking. No promises, no guarantees. Today, everything precious to him lay in his arms. Tomorrow, it might all be gone.

Shiro leaned forward to lay another kiss on Keith’s flushed lips. Even spent, their bodies surged at the touch, arousal kindling from beneath exhaustion. He took Keith’s hand and guided it under his shirt.

“Baby,” he said, as soft as a prayer, “we have all the time in the world.”

* * *

Being with Keith changed everything.

Shiro couldn’t remember ever sleeping better than he did with Keith in his arms. Waking up to Keith’s face healed something in him he hadn’t thought could ever be fixed. Every touch made warmth bloom in his chest, every kiss transported him, and every time he heard Keith say “I love you” he wondered how he’d survived all these years without it. It was as if they’d always been together, and loving each other was less a new discovery and more a sweet acceptance of their natural state. It was so easy to love Keith, and his love cast everything around it in new colors.

Instead of feeling like a grave for his broken body to moulder in, the Underground became a cozy burrow for the two of them to enjoy. The long, boring, sunless days that blended jarringly into night became an unprecedented amount of free time - they spent hours lying together, exploring each other’s bodies, and laughing as they recounted all the years they’d spent longing for each other.

Even though he was spending more time than ever with Keith, Shiro suddenly had the energy and curiosity to explore the Underground and get to know their hosts. Pidge joked with him and babbled happily about her other projects as she fine-tuned his prosthetic, integrating it ever more smoothly with his body until the alien sensation of it began to slowly fade. It still didn’t feel like his arm, but each improvement gave him more hope that it one day would. It also helped that his mind was clearing as Allura weaned him off the painkillers and muscle relaxers he’d been on. He’d found her stern and unapproachable at first, but the more time they spent together the more he appreciated her quiet, generous personality.

He’d expected to be kicked out as soon as he was healed, but by the time Pidge was done tinkering and Allura stopped scheduling follow-up exams they had become friendly enough that no one bothered to evict them. The Underground began to feel like a home. The five of them began to feel like a family.

That all ended one October morning, when their troubles finally caught up with the peaceful way of life they’d just started to build.

Everyone was in the kitchen, all of their disparate sleep schedules aligning this once for a communal breakfast of sorts. The milk was powdered and the coffee was watery as they tried to stretch the last of their supply until the next delivery. For food, Pidge was frying up a fermented bean paste into something like pancakes. Allura smothered hers in hot sauce and wolfed them down. Shiro and Takashi made nervous eye contact and reached for the cereal instead.

Keith took a plate from Pidge and poked at the pancake dubiously. “Are you sure this is safe to eat?”

“Hey, fuck you!” said Pidge good-naturedly. “It’s hard to get fresh food when you literally live underground. Fermented stuff is the best.”

Takashi nudged the plate closer to Keith as he popped another handful of sugar-glazed cereal bits into his own mouth, saying, “It’s good for you. Lots of protein.”

Shiro felt a flash of annoyance as Takashi leaned closer, urging Keith to eat while they both laughed. Then he caught himself. There was no point in being jealous anymore, if there had ever been a point to it in the first place. No one wanted Keith and Shiro together more than Takashi did. Still, it was hard to accept another man - even his own older self - loving and caring for Keith in that way. He simmered quietly until Keith swung a leg out under the table to rub his foot up and down Shiro’s calf. That quickly made him forget why he’d ever been bothered.

Keith finally took a bite of his pancake, his face skeptical, then hopeful, then disappointed. “It’s fine, I guess,” he said. “But I would stab any of you for a blueberry right now. None of you are safe.”

Pidge flipped another pancake out of the pan with a flourish of her spatula, looking like she was about to answer, when a beep from her watch interrupted her. She turned off the stove and put her bowls and pans aside as she inspected the alert.

“Do you have to go take care of something?” said Allura. She was trying to sound calm, but she’d stopped eating and her jaw was tense.

“Yeah…” said Pidge, distracted. “Shouldn’t take… long…” She tapped at the watch again, but it kept beeping at her with alarms popping up as fast as she could dismiss them.

Then they all flinched at the sudden pop of a distant explosion. Dust rained down on the breakfast table as the ceiling shook, and the utensils on the counter rattled and bounced. Everyone froze. Aside from that single jolt there was no more movement, no more sound, but Pidge’s face continued to harden into a mask of determination and resolve.

“There’s been a security breach,” she said.

“Don’t jump to conclusions,” said Shiro. The noise had been startling, but it was quiet now. Maybe it had been nothing. “It could have been some equipment malfunctioning.”

But Pidge was already jerking open a compartment under the sink and retrieving a hidden pair of pistols. She slapped a button inside the cabinet and Shiro heard the sound of emergency doors closing down the halls.

“It wasn’t an equipment malfunction,” said Allura, rising from the table. She had a weapon too, though Shiro hadn’t seen where it came from. It was a delicate plastic handle with a squat muzzle and colorful buttons along the side. Instead of bullets, she loaded three cartridges into it. Shiro wasn’t sure what it was supposed to be, but he was glad Allura wasn’t pointing it at him.

The women moved toward the door as Shiro, Takashi, and Keith scrambled to their feet, food forgotten. “We can help,” said Takashi.

“Feel free,” Pidge replied distractedly as she peeked carefully around the corner, checking the hall before moving into it.

“Don’t we get guns, too?” said Keith.

“We’ve stayed alive this long by not arming our patients,” Allura briskly replied, following Pidge into the hall. Takashi was close behind, despite being unarmed. Shiro kept one hand on Keith as they ran to keep up with the group.

They followed the direction of the alarms that continued to ping onto Pidge’s watch, checking and sealing exits as they went. The tunnels were more extensive than Shiro had ever explored, or even comprehended, and he was soon lost. This place was designed to be a maze with enough ways in and out that its occupants could never be cornered, sectioned off into compartments to contain and control the spread of an invasion. It was obviously a carefully-designed system. But for all their planning, Pidge and Allura were only two people, and sooner or later they would have to face their enemy head on if they wanted to defend their home.

As they left the main complex and entered the unfinished part of the Underground, the help of Pidge’s technology thinned out. Doors were few and far between, the dirt walls were uneven and narrow, and they had to dodge their way through rubble. Shiro and Takashi had to duck to avoid the pipes and beams coursing overhead.

Suddenly Pidge and Allura, at the head of the pack, slowed and backed up to hug the walls. Shiro soon realized why: there were unfamiliar voices coming from up ahead. They were narrowing in on the intruders.

“They got in through the entrance under the statue,” said Pidge. “The hallway makes a loop up ahead. Allura, you cover the west branch so they can’t sneak around us. I’ll go up the middle.”

“Where should we go?” asked Shiro, watching Allura disappear around a bend.

“Stay out of our way,” Pidge advised as she began to move.

Keith stepped forward and held Pidge back with a hand on her shoulder. “Don’t be stupid. We can help you.”

Pidge shrugged him off. “Calm down. It’s probably just some thieves who expect us to be an easy target, or some dumb street kids who think they’re clever for finding their way down here. I don’t need you guys getting all trigger-happy.”

“But what if it’s Haggar?” Keith insisted.

“Tell you what. If we’re under attack by the Witch, then you can have a gun.”

While they argued, voices perhaps a little louder than they should have been, Shiro kept his eyes on the corridor ahead. Enemies could be on them at any second. But even with all his attention focused, Shiro didn’t see anyone before gunfire suddenly broke out.

Confusion reigned as a hail of bullets thudded against the hard-packed dirt walls around them. One cut a stripe in the sleeve of Keith’s jacket, far too close for comfort. Shiro dragged him backwards behind a curve. Next he looked around for Pidge, only to spot her holding her ground in the middle of the hallway, firing her pistols over and over again. As the enemy’s fire became ever more focused and accurate, Shiro finally spotted their adversaries: druids, at least four of them, darting and advancing toward where Pidge was making her stand.

The only reason she wasn’t cut down was because Takashi grabbed her around her midsection as the firefight intensified, carrying her over to join Keith and Shiro behind cover. As he retreated, a bullet clinked harmlessly off his metal arm.

“Shit!” said Pidge fervidly.

“Now can we help?” said Keith.

Pidge glowered at him but handed over one of her pistols.

Keith immediately crouched and began firing down the hallway into the pack of oncoming druids. As they returned fire, Takashi hoisted up a piece of rusted machinery leaning against a wall - a thick steel plate as tall as his waist - and slammed it into the dirt in front of Keith. Heedless of the bullets clanging off his shield, Keith kept firing around it until his pistol overheated and began clicking uselessly. He then reached out, eyes unfocused and fingers grasping in the air as if searching for something, until one of the druids yelped in surprise and a gat flew into Keith’s hand. He turned the druid’s own gun around on him and opened fire once more.

While Keith held the druids at bay, Pidge grabbed Shiro. “Go help Allura,” she ordered. “There could be more of them circling around the other way.”

Shiro hesitated. Leaving Keith in the middle of this was unthinkable. But then he noticed Takashi hovering by Keith’s shoulder, pulling him back behind cover by the nape of his neck when he leaned too far out into the hailstorm of bullets. Takashi caught Shiro’s eye and nodded. Shiro could trust him to keep Keith safe.

“Okay, keep going. I’ll meet you in the middle,” he relented, leaving the group to follow the side tunnel Allura had taken.

This tunnel was even darker and more cramped, or maybe it just felt that way now that he was alone. Shiro hurried to catch up with Allura, clattering through the debris on the floor and dodging the low beams. She must have made it much farther up the loop than the others before meeting resistance. He heard a boom like thunder from not too far up ahead, and picked up his speed.

When he rounded the final corner, Shiro spotted Allura standing over a limp and lifeless druid. Before he could reach her, another druid appeared from the other direction, gat raised. Allura, with her little plastic weapon, looked like she had brought a toy to a gunfight. But when she pulled the trigger, the darkened hallway blazed for an instant with blue light, every pebble and nook illuminated by a beam of lightning that arced from Allura’s hand and lanced through the druid’s body. The druid fell to the ground, dead before the thunderclap had stopped reverberating.

“Allura!” Shiro announced himself as he came up behind her, not wanting to startle her while she was holding such a weapon. “Pidge sent me to back you up, but it doesn’t look like you need me.”

“We’ll see,” said Allura, clicking a lever to discharge the spent cartridge. “This thing only has one shot left.”

A final druid ran around the corner, already shooting. Allura grunted and staggered as a bullet grazed her thigh, but managed to fire her last lightning blast in response. Electricity heated the air and made the hair on Shiro’s arms stand up. But the druid was quick. He swept his hand through the air, lashing out though he was yards away, and he must have been TK because Allura’s hands were knocked upwards so that her weapon fired harmlessly into the ceiling.

The last cartridge dropped, smoking, out of her gun. Shiro tackled her behind a huge, steel post just before the druid began shooting again. The column took the brunt of the attack, but it wasn’t quite broad enough to completely shield them both, and the druid was getting closer.

A bullet bounced off Shiro’s prosthetic, making him stagger. As he peeked around the corner, the druid smiled and reached out, closing his hand around nothing. But Shiro felt that hand closing around his throat. He twisted and clawed at it, but there was nothing for him to grab or counter. The druid took advantage of Shiro’s stumble to wrench him out from behind the post, and Shiro fell onto his hands and knees in the middle of the hallway. No weapon, no cover, no defense.

The next moment seem to last an eternity.

Shiro looked up. The druid had his gat pointed at Shiro’s chest, and a muscle in his forearm shifted as he began to pull the trigger. As he lined up his shot, three people ran up behind him. Takashi, Pidge, and, in the lead, Keith - they’d cleared the loop and made it around the other side.

Somehow Shiro had time to notice Takashi’s speed and efficiency as he raised his gat to aim it at the back of the druid’s head. Keith’s wild-eyed terror as he sprinted toward Shiro, reaching out for him though he was much too far away to help. And the grim resignation that fell across Pidge’s face as she realized that they were a second too late.

Takashi and the druid fired at the same time.

The druid jerked as the bullet hit his skull with a wet crunching sound, and he went down like a puppet with cut strings. Shiro lay frozen in the dirt, unable to breathe, unable to think, feeling suspended in time while he waited for the same thing to happen to him.

But it didn’t. And Shiro finally saw why when he refocused his eyes and saw the bullet suspended in the air, still rotating slightly, just feet away from his chest. He could almost see the lines of influence and force running from it back to Keith’s outstretched hand, yards away, each muscle and tendon spring loaded with the deadly velocity he’d just caught and stopped.

With an exhale, Keith staggered as his coiled body relaxed. The bullet fell to the ground. Shiro found his feet and ran the length of the corridor to catch Keith before he fell, both of them shaking as they clung to each other, weak with exhaustion and confusion and relief.

As Pidge ran the other way to help Allura, who was hopping out from behind the pipe on her uninjured leg, Shiro looked over Keith’s shoulder at Takashi. “You should have warned us,” he said.

Takashi shook his head, looking just as shaken as the rest of them. “It didn’t happen like this in my loop.”

Pidge rejoined them, supporting a limping Allura and looking as mad as a wet cat. “Great! Just great. Now I have to seal off this entrance, reinforce all the other ones, change all my access codes and protocols, and find a way to warn all my customers they might be compromised while also trying to figure out who leaked our location while also trying not to compromise us any more than we already are! That’s if this place is even salvageable. Depending on how much Haggar knows, we might have to abandon the Underground and completely start over somewhere else. And YOU!” She rounded on Keith. “You’re not just some looper! Why didn’t you tell us you were TK?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Keith grunted, still leaning on Shiro for support as he swayed, lightheaded.

“Of course it does,” said Allura. Her face was gray-ish from shock and pain, but her voice was still strong. “Haggar collects people like you. Haven’t you noticed how many of her druids are TK?”

“I was just a looper, I swear! I’m not working with her!”

“Liar!” Allura spat. “Ordinary TK can barely lift a quarter. How else did you become so powerful, unless the Witch was teaching you?”

Shiro shifted himself between Allura and Keith. Though Keith was dizzy with exhaustion and Allura injured, they both looked angry enough that Shiro didn’t put it past either of them to turn this fight physical. “That’s enough! Allura, I’ve known Keith since way before he was a looper. He’s always been like this.”

Pidge squeezed Allura’s shoulder, calming her down while holding her back. “Either way, none of you can stay here.” All three of them started to protest, but Pidge stopped them with a raised hand and a firm command to shut up. “I’m not trying to be an asshole, guys! It’s not safe for you here anymore. We’ll drop you off wherever you want, but you gotta be packed and ready to go by the end of the day.”

She wasn’t kidding. Within an hour, Pidge had locked down the entire complex while Allura stitched up her own leg. Keith, Shiro, and Takashi collected what few belongings they’d arrived with. They waited for the heat of the afternoon to pass, then Allura led them to a hidden door with an opening to an underground garage. A rusty SUV carried them up through a trapdoor into an alley, and through the tinted windows Shiro caught his first glimpse of sunlight since he’d crashed his bike on the freeway.

“Haggar will be looking for a group of three,” said Allura, “or at least two. You might have a better chance if you split up.”

Takashi glanced sidelong at Shiro, but said nothing. They both remembered Shiro trying to ditch him back when all this had just started. Shiro spoke for all of them. “We’ll stick together.”

After that brief exchange, Allura drove in frosty silence. Keith sat beside her in the passenger seat, arms crossed and feet propped up on the dashboard. Neither of them took their eyes off the windshield.

The sky hadn’t quite started turning the colors of sunset when Allura pulled up to the curb in an unfamiliar neighborhood. It was well chosen - nowhere near Shiro’s shop or Keith’s apartment, far from Haggar’s search radius. Neither so run-down that they were likely to get mugged by caravaners, nor so affluent that they were in danger of getting the cops called on them. This was the kind of place where they would have a chance of blending in and surviving, at least for a little while.

“Keith,” said Allura as her passengers hopped down onto the street. Keith looked up, braced for a final parting shot. But Allura only jerked her head toward the back of the SUV. There, Shiro found three backpacks full of changes of clothes and basic supplies. Even some weapons, including one of Pidge’s custom pistols, and a medical kit from Allura’s stash.

“Thanks,” said Keith guardedly, still not trusting this kindness even as he strapped on his backpack and closed the trunk behind.

Allura stared at them for a moment through the open passenger window, eyebrows low and mouth tight. Shiro couldn’t tell if she was still angry or if she was about to cry. “Good luck,” she said, and drove away.

* * *

They didn’t linger outside for long. Even away from downtown, here where the druids were fewer and farther between, they were exposed as long as they stayed in the open. After all, druids weren’t the only danger. Haggar had street-level informers, and connections in city government and police force. Shiro eyed every security camera they passed, wondering who was looking at the feed.

Takashi took one sidewalk, and Keith walked on the other side of the street. Shiro lagged about a block behind, just close enough to keep within sight but not so close that they looked like a group. Soon enough, Keith spotted what they were looking for: an abandoned building not already occupied by squatters. He nodded toward a gas station with a fallen outdoor canopy and toppled shelves visible through graffiti-covered windows, and Takashi and Shiro followed him inside one by one.

The interior was so picked-over, there was no point in foraging. It was clear the shelves were all empty, and the refrigerators along the walls hadn’t had power in who-knows-how-long. Everything that couldn’t go bad had been taken long ago, and everything else was rancid sludge. Instead, they opened their backpacks and found sandwiches and water bottles right on top. They saluted Pidge and Allura as they ate.

An unwelcome awkwardness settled over the group. It struck Shiro that, though they’d spent nearly two months living in close quarters in the Underground, he couldn’t remember a time they’d sat down together, just the three of them, without Pidge or Allura present as a buffer. He wanted to say something to make the others more comfortable, but couldn’t think of anything, so he hid his reticence behind mouthfuls of Pidge’s awful bean paste.

Keith was the one who finally cut through the silence, having wolfed down his food with the efficiency of a man who had grown up not knowing where his next meal was coming from. “So,” he said. “What now?”

“We should stay here for the night,” said Takashi.

“Yeah,” Keith sighed. “I meant after that.”

Shiro and Takashi looked at the floor, neither wanting to have this fight again. They’d been discussing it for weeks, never reaching a consensus. But now the time to choose was upon them. Would they run? Or would they fight?

“It would have been better to get the girls on our side,” Takashi mused. “But even if it’s just the three of us, we can still get to Haggar. We just have to be careful. We need a good plan.”

Shiro nodded. “She doesn’t leave the tower, right? So we have to figure out how to get in there.”

“You don’t…” Keith grunted in frustration as he swiped a hand down his face. “God, listen to you. Neither of you understand what it’s like in there. What she is like. I don’t want you going into that place. You won’t come back out.” He stared at his hands, folded in his lap, and said quietly, “It’s not too late. We can still run.”

“Maybe we can have it both ways,” said Shiro, making the others look up and take notice. “We could retreat for now. Take our time to regroup. Then, when Pidge and Allura are ready to attack, we could come back and lend our strength.”

But Takashi shook his head. “They won’t ever be ready. Think about it. I knew them in my loop, too. Same women, same resources, same Underground. But in the years after Keith and I left Seattle, the Syndicate only grew. Either Pidge and Allura changed their minds, or they waited too long and Haggar got to them first. Either way, we can’t rely on them to lead the charge. It has to be us.”

Keith’s eyes dropped closed, squeezing shut to hide his despair. “I just don’t want to lose you. If we ran, at least we’d have time. Even just a little time…”

Shiro and Takashi made eye contact over Keith’s head. They both knew why that wasn’t an option. “If I could explain everything that happened to us,” said Takashi, choosing his words carefully, “you’d understand why I can’t let you go through that again.”

“I mean…” said Keith, rubbing his eyes and looking up at each of them in turn. “It’s not that hard to explain. I die, right?”

Shiro flinched. Takashi just made a sound halfway between a scoff and a laugh. “What gave it away?” he wondered.

Keith smiled, though his eyes were sad. “Oh, there were some hints, but I didn’t need them. I knew as soon as I recognized you. I would never have let the Syndicate take you if I’d been alive.”

So, he’d known all along. And he still wanted to run. Did he always value his life so little? Shiro took Keith’s hands and folded them together, wrapping his own around them until Keith took notice and looked up at him. “I don’t want to run,” Shiro spoke softly, fervently. “I want to be with you for the rest of my life, and I want that life to have some meaning. We can’t always be looking over our shoulders. I can’t live waiting to find out when I lose you. If there’s a chance, even a slim one, then we have to try and end this.”

Keith still looked conflicted, but he bowed his head until his face rested against Shiro’s folded hands. “Okay,” he whispered. “Okay.”

* * *

It was clear why this place, of all the abandoned buildings on the block, hadn’t attracted any squatters. It had a threadbare roof, large front windows, and barely any insulation, making it hot enough inside that Shiro could feel the warm air on his tongue each time he took a breath, even as the sun went down. Takashi bedded down in one of the aisles with a line of sight to the front door, promising to keep watch for the night. Shiro wasn’t sure how an old man like him could tolerate the heat and the hard tile floor, but Takashi insisted he’d slept in worse places.

Shiro poked around, looking for something more comfortable for himself and Keith. The storage room had a hole in the exterior wall and the bathroom was horrifying, but the little office through the locked door behind the counter was cozy despite being full of junk. Shiro cleared it out and set about trying to make it habitable.

While Shiro hauled piles of rotting paper and pieces of broken furniture away, Keith explored deeper in their packs. He found a dense package the size of a hardcover book in a side pocket, and when he undid the latch it sprang open and inflated into a thin sleeping pad. He also found an electric fan that was much more powerful than its small size would suggest. Keith moved into the office and attached the fan to an exposed pipe with a magnet while Shiro slid open the clerestory window hugging the ceiling. Shiro hoped the air circulation would take the edge off just enough that they could sleep; but as they stripped down to nothing and crawled into bed together, it turned out not even the heat could stop them from getting carried away with each other.

The sky was completely dark by the time they finished making love. They sprawled on the bed and on each other, their sweat making the fabric of the sheets a few degrees cooler than the sweltering air.

Keith looked wistful as he gazed out the window at the clear night sky. He reclined like a painting, his chin balanced on his hand, his legs bent and his back arched languidly. The cleft of his rear was still shiny with lube, and a little of Shiro’s come was smeared between his thighs. His upturned face caught the orange glow of the streetlamp outside. Shiro had never seen anything more beautiful.

He was so transfixed that he almost missed it when Keith said, suddenly and quietly, “What about after?”

“After what?” said Shiro.

Keith shifted his chin in his hand so he could use his pinky finger to play with his lower lip. Shiro longed to knock his hand away and suck that lip into his mouth, but he forced himself to listen as Keith answered, “After we’re free.”

Free. Shiro felt a rush just from hearing Keith say the word. He must have looked too hopeful, because Keith grimaced and rolled his eyes.

“I’m not saying it’s going to happen. I still think attacking Haggar is more likely to get us all killed. But let’s say we win. What would we even do, then? Where would we go? How do we even begin to decide?”

Usually, when Keith talked about the future, it was a dark hypothetical or a pessimistic joke. The only future that truly seemed to exist for him was Shiro’s. He used to talk about all the places Shiro might fly off to in his plane one day, but when it came to himself Keith would only shrug as if the question didn’t interest him. This was the first time he’d brought it up using the word “we,” and it made Shiro’s heart leap.

“Whatever you want, baby.”

Keith wrinkled his nose. “I don’t know what I want. Never really thought about it.”

“Okay, okay,” Shiro chuckled. “Even if none of this had happened and everything had gone to your original plan, you were still going to have thirty years between closing your loop and getting snatched by the Syndicate. You never thought about what you wanted to do with all that time?”

Keith finally took his eyes off the window and looked at Shiro. He said, with a tender vulnerability that Shiro didn’t expect, “I always thought I knew how my story was going to end, so it didn’t seem to matter much what I did in the middle. I guess I assumed I’d just go wherever you went. All I’ve ever wanted is to be with you.”

Shiro had to hide his melting heart behind a casual smile, because he knew he would just scare Keith off if he got too mushy now. “Well, you’ve got me,” he said. “Where do you want us to go?”

“You choose.”

“Australia,” said Shiro, blurting out the first thing that came to his mind.

Keith’s bashful earnestness disappeared, replaced by mock disgust. “You want to die? It’s so hot there!”

“Well, you asked!” Shiro laughed. “You pick one, then.”

“Maybe somewhere with mountains. Being able to see the mountains is the only good thing about Seattle, but I’ve never even been to Rainier. I’d like to climb a mountain. Montana has mountains, right?”

Shiro reached over to cup Keith’s face in his hand. They were lying a few inches apart, trying to stay cool, but he couldn’t help but touch him in that moment. “Baby, we can go farther than Montana. What about the Swiss Alps? The Himalayas? The Andes?”

A slow, shy smile spread across Keith’s face. He looked guilty, but delighted. This kind of fantasy was an extravagance he’d never allowed himself before. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “All of those.”

“Where else?”

Keith really thought about it this time, and hesitated before he said, “Do you remember Regris? He was from Alaska. He told me you can still see the Northern Lights from there.”

Shiro slid his hand from Keith’s face into the tangle of his hair. “Alaska,” he said, trying the word out in his mouth. “We could settle down there, when we’re done traveling the world.”

Keith’s smile was so big, and so gorgeous, as he said, “No. Let’s not plan that far ahead. I want to enjoy our story without knowing how it ends.”

Delirious with happiness, Shiro rolled closer and planted his face in the crook of Keith’s neck, holding him close.

“Don’t, I’m all sweaty!” Keith laughed. Shiro answered by squeezing him tighter and licking a stripe up his neck, earning more laughter and an intoxicating flash of salt on his tongue. The sweat on their bodies hadn’t had time to get stale, so Keith smelled fresh and musky with just a hint of the soap from his shower that morning back in the Underground. Shiro could have happily breathed him in all night.

His dick, which he’d thought was spent, started throbbing again as he scooted downwards to mouth Keith’s shoulder, kiss his ribs, and lightly bite the jut of his hipbone. By the time Shiro was nuzzling the inside of Keith’s thigh, they were both half-hard and hungry for another round.

Shiro had his mouth open, ready to suck Keith to full arousal, when Keith tensed up and whispered, “You hear that?” Shiro hadn’t heard anything, but he froze as Keith sat up and reached out toward the office door on the other side of the room. He twisted his hand and the latch clicked, letting the door swing open.

Shoes squeaked on the tile floor as someone hurriedly scooted out of sight behind the door frame. Then Takashi seemed to realize how ridiculous he was being, and re-appeared with a sheepish look on his face. “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop,” he muttered. “It was just nice, remembering.”

He seemed about to shuffle away, but Keith closed his fist and Takashi’s shirt tented in front of his chest, stretching until it forced him to stagger forward into the room. With a sweep of his other hand, Keith closed the door behind him. “Don’t go,” said Keith, reaching out for him with a soft and willing smile.

Takashi’s eyes flicked to Shiro as he approached, perhaps expecting an objection. But Shiro just shifted over to make enough room for Takashi to sit down beside them. He looked awkward beside the two naked and glistening younger men, stiff-backed and fully clothed with hands folded in his lap. Keith took one of Takashi’s hands and spread it palm-flat against his own bare chest, arching his back to invite a deeper touch.

Shiro searched his feelings for the jealousy he’d felt weeks before, and found it absent. Back then, so many negative emotions had found their way in through the cracks made by loneliness and pain. Shiro had feared Takashi as a rival for Keith’s affection and, even more so, as the harbinger of a future he could not accept. Now, secure in Keith’s love, he was finally able to extend Takashi the same grace and compassion Keith had shown him from the start. Whatever had happened to Takashi, whatever was still to come for Shiro, they were the same person. Shiro didn’t want to be afraid of himself anymore.

Takashi’s hand shook a little where it rested on Keith’s chest. Shiro slid his hand across dewy skin to meet it, and laced each of his fingers onto its calloused, wrinkled double. “Stay a while,” he said, which made Takashi relax at last.

Keith undid the buttons of Takashi’s shirt one by one while four hands roamed his body. He seemed to enjoy double the attention, especially when Takashi worked two fingers gently into his mouth while Shiro kissed the small of his back. The sleeping pad was too small for all three of them, so their play tumbled onto the vinyl floor. Even the dingy surroundings couldn’t dampen their happiness at being together, with both Shiros orbiting Keith like a guiding star.

In their shifting tangle, Takashi scooted out of the way and Shiro ended up on top of Keith. Shiro was so hard now that he ached, and Keith was flushed and panting, his mouth open, his eyes closed, looking beautiful and obscene. Shiro nudged Keith’s knees apart eagerly and positioned himself to enter him for the second time that night.

But Takashi gave Shiro’s shoulder a little shove, throwing him off balance long enough to make him pause. “Hey,” said Takashi. “Let Keith have a turn on top.”

“What?” mumbled Shiro, too stupid with arousal to say much more. The suggestion caught him off guard. It wasn’t as if he’d never tried it before; Shiro wasn’t one of those guys who acted like their top credentials would be revoked if they ever enjoyed a single cock in their ass. He and Keith had simply fallen into the roles they were most comfortable with, and it had worked out well so far. “I mean, sure. Okay. It’s just not my favorite thing.”

Takashi’s hand didn’t come up fast enough to hide his smile. “With Keith, it is,” he said.

“Would you let me?” said Keith, more eagerly than Shiro would have expected.

“Baby...” Shiro ducked his head. “I’d do anything for you.”

He got back on the bed, its meager padding at least a step up from the hard floor, and reclined on his back. Keith seemed nervous as he joined him. He knelt between Shiro’s legs and popped open the half-empty bottle of lube they’d stolen from Pidge’s supply room, blushing as he squeezed a dollop into his hand. Shiro hooked his legs behind Keith’s back and drew him closer.

“You’re going to be great,” said Shiro.

Keith’s blush deepened, but he leaned forward confidently to give Shiro a kiss. “I just want to make it really good for you. I’d hate to disappoint you.”

“You could never...” Shiro could have said more, but just then Keith slid his hand between Shiro’s cheeks, making him shiver. Not from the temperature, though the lube was deliciously cool compared to his sticky and lust-warmed skin, but from the intimacy of the touch. He hiked his legs farther up Keith’s back to give him easier access, and Keith smoothed his fingers up and down the tight cleft, easing each muscle into relaxation.

For the last few weeks, Shiro had taken the lead, fueling their love-making with his pent up desire. Of course he’d been careful with Keith, of course he’d concerned himself with Keith’s pleasure. But mostly, they’d fucked rough and raw with all the desperation born from nearly ten years of denial. Keith was hungry now, too. Shiro could see it in his eyes. But it simmered below the surface, and Keith was unhurried as he dipped one finger inside Shiro over and over to smear every surface with lube. His dick was hard where it rested against Shiro’s thigh, but there was no urgency in the way he looked down at Shiro - his face, his exposed body, and his twitching erection - seeming fascinated by every blink and breath and whimper.

“Does that feel good?” asked Keith, pausing with his finger inside to the last knuckle.

Shiro was surprised to find his own voice thready and shaking when he answered, “Uh-huh.” Keith’s fingers were so slender that one couldn’t hurt or even challenge him, but even that slight, sweet intrusion made his whole body weak. He hadn’t anticipated what it would do to him to be held by Keith inside and out, while basking in the spotlight of his undivided attention. “Please, don’t stop!”

While Keith added more lube and kept teasing, Shiro looked around for Takashi, bracing himself for smugness. Instead, he found him lounging nearby, keeping quiet and just far enough away not to interrupt. His shirt and the fly of his pants were open, his hard cock peeking above the elastic of his boxers, and he stroked himself lazily while watching the scene in front of him unfold with a wistful smile on his face. When he noticed Shiro watching, Takashi moved closer and offered his free hand. Shiro held it, feeling strange to accept comfort from an older version of himself, but glad of the anchor while his body and emotions fell out of his control with each touch from Keith’s hand.

Finally, Keith trailed his lube-slick fingers up to grasp Shiro’s thigh, pushing so his lower back curled off the mattress and rolling his hips forward. Shiro felt the head of Keith’s cock nudge up against him until it met resistance. He squeezed Takashi’s hand, readying himself for pain, even craving it, but Keith slowed down until he was just a gentle but insistent pressure on Shiro’s entrance, encouraging him to open up without forcing.

Keith took his time, prodding forward agonizingly slowly. Every time Shiro relaxed, Keith pressed a fraction harder. Every time Shiro tensed up, Keith withdrew, smoothing his hands over Shiro’s body. Back and forth they shared their wordless conversation, until the last of Shiro’s resistance fell and the head of Keith’s cock slipped effortlessly inside him. The pain of a quick fuck would have been simpler to endure than the way Keith was taking him apart inch by inch. Shiro’s chest and face felt flushed, his legs wouldn’t stop shaking, and he couldn’t seem to catch his breath. Keith leaned down and pressed a hand to Shiro’s chest, reminding him to breathe deeply, and waiting until he’d done so before entering him fully.

This was pleasure and surrender Shiro hadn’t even known he wanted. He’d spent so many years reaching out to Keith, tugging at the thread between them, but he hadn’t truly understood the depth of the affection and love waiting for him at the other end of that line. Keith’s guarded friendship hadn’t given it away, and Shiro hadn’t picked up on it when Keith had responded to danger by cleaving to his side and protecting him with all his strength. Even hearing the words aloud a few weeks ago, though welcome, hadn’t given him the full picture.

Only now, as Keith laid tender claim to his body, did realization spark in Shiro: he would never have to chase Keith down again. Not because Keith belonged to him now, but because he belonged to Keith.

Shiro still had Takashi by the hand. And as Keith began to thrust, hair bouncing and abs rippling with every roll of his hips, Shiro pulled Takashi closer. He didn’t think about what he was doing - he couldn’t, not with the overwhelming bliss frying all logical thought from his brain - but something in his pleasure-addled mind wanted Takashi close, so he dragged him onto the bed. Their eyes met in a flash of recognition. Shiro lay in the grip of the moment, Takashi in the memory of the same, and they understood each other so well that neither had to ask the other to kiss him. They just did, coming together like mirror images, and Shiro tried to pour all his gratitude into it. A month ago, he’d been convinced Takashi’s arrival had ruined his life. Now, he was sure it had saved him.

Takashi kissed Keith next - his lips, then down his neck and back up to nibble his ear, removing his shirt as he went. Keith’s rhythm faltered and he chewed his lower lip, trying to concentrate despite the two Shiros demanding his attention. Takashi whispered something in Keith’s ear that made him blush and, after a second or two of thought, Keith nodded.

Shiro wasn’t sure what Keith had agreed to until Takashi knelt behind him and pulled his pants the rest of the way down. Keith’s thrusting slowed, then stopped as Takashi took hold of Keith’s hips and cradled him against his body. It hadn’t been long since Shiro had fucked him, so Keith was still wet and loose for Takashi as he pressed his way inside.

Keith tried to stay upright but finally collapsed onto Shiro’s chest, writhing and whimpering, pinned helplessly between the two larger men. Shiro took Keith’s hands and received a ferocious squeeze as Takashi fucked, each movement making Keith’s body jerk and pushing him deeper into Shiro.

As Takashi picked up the pace, he grabbed Keith by his shoulder and a tangle of hair to haul him back upright. Shiro’s legs now framed the two of them: Keith so lost in pleasure he was beyond words, his mouth hanging open in a plaintive moan, and Takashi thrusting behind him with his face buried in the curve of Keith’s neck. His white hair glimmered in the glow of the streetlight, the window filtering in just enough to highlight each wrinkle and scar on his face. Despite the physical differences between them, Shiro’s heart leapt to recognize himself in that tableau. Himself, half a lifetime later, still moving with grace and passion, still in love with Keith, still making love to Keith. Shiro looked into the future and for the first time, instead of fearing it, he looked forward to it.

[ ](https://twitter.com/hzlkx/status/1206267549672972290?s=20)

Keith came shouting and straining, his fingernails grasping so hard at Takashi’s arm where it looped around him that he would have left marks if the arm had been flesh. Takashi barely slowed. He kept Keith riding that orgasm until his shouts became sobs, and his movement kept Shiro riding, too, as the sight of Keith wracked with pleasure sent him over the edge next. Takashi let go and pulled out, letting Keith fall into Shiro’s arms, and finished himself off with his hand so that his come splattered onto Keith’s trembling back. When he collapsed, too, the three of them became a tangle of limbs, sticky and sore and barely-coherent as they tried to catch their breaths.

For those few minutes before they fully returned to themselves, it didn’t seem to matter whose arm was whose, whose leg, whose hair, whose lips. They caressed and kissed and loved each other equally. A metal hand, its surface made warm by the heat of the three bodies around it, trailed up Shiro’s chest and neck to cup his face. Shiro turned into the touch to kiss it on the palm. The revulsion he’d felt for his own body, though it had waned by fractions over the weeks, still haunted him. But for those few minutes, it was gone. He loved Takashi, every bit of him, and through him Shiro took the long road back to loving himself.

Keith’s eyelashes fluttered against Shiro’s face as they kissed, and when Shiro pulled away he chuckled to find that Keith had fallen asleep. He was curled in the middle of the sleeping pad, and there was no room for three no matter how densely they cuddled, so Shiro and Takashi curled up on either side of him like bookends, each of them half-on and half-off the pad. Takashi wrapped his arm around Keith and rested his hand near the base of his throat, seeming to take comfort from the pulse thrumming there.

“I didn’t expect this,” Takashi murmured.

Shiro laughed softly, trying not to wake Keith. “Neither did I. But I’m glad it happened.”

“Me, too.” Takashi had tears in his eyes as he looked down at Keith’s sleeping face. “I thought I would be lucky just to get a glimpse of him again. I didn’t dare to hope for more. This was… thank you.”

Shiro reached across and gripped Takashi’s shoulder. “He’s yours, too. He loves you.”

“He loves you.” Takashi took his hand off Keith and inched away. “I’m just your shadow.”

But Shiro tightened his grip and drew Takashi closer. “He loves me. He loves you. It’s the same.” He ran his hand through downy white hair and, looking closely, found that it was not quite white after all. There was more gray in it than Shiro remembered, and some scattered strands of black remained around his temples. Even his face looked less weathered. Shiro might have already started turning into Takashi, but Takashi was changing too. By improving Shiro’s future, they’d been repairing Takashi’s past, and now the evidence of it was written all over him in the patches of unmarked skin where scars used to be. “It’s the same. We’re the same.”

The look on Takashi’s face was raw and almost painful with its depth of relief and gratitude. Comforted, he settled back in and resumed watching Keith sleep. Takashi had always looked so troubled, even during their brief good times in the Underground, and Shiro smiled to see him finally enjoy a moment of uncomplicated happiness.

Then Takashi’s face shifted. His smile flattened out, and his eyes darted back and forth as if he’d lost his place on the page of a book.

“What is it?” said Shiro.

Takashi opened his mouth, then closed it, not yet trusting the truth he was about to speak. Shiro could almost see the cogs turning in his mind as he verified and re-verified before daring to say, “I can’t remember Keith dying anymore.”

Even in the heat, the hair on the back of Shiro’s neck stood up. “What does that mean?”

Takashi whispered so quickly that he tripped over the words. “It’s gone, just… just gone. God, I’ve re-lived that night so many times that it felt like it was part of me. I think about it every time I look at him. But just then my mind tried to go there, and it couldn’t. It’s not in there anymore. It didn’t happen. Oh my god! It’s not going to happen!”

“Is he going to survive? If we attack the Syndicate, does this mean he makes it?”

“I don’t know.” Takashi kept glancing down at Keith, making sure he was still asleep. “Obviously, anything could happen if we face Haggar. Keith isn’t immortal. He could still die. But not that night, not that bullet, not like that.”

That didn’t feel like much of a reassurance to Shiro. But Takashi looked like someone had lifted a weight from atop his shoulders - there was a softness and an ease to him that hadn’t been there before. Shiro watched him pick Keith’s braid up off his shoulder and twirl the end around his fingers, a helpless smile on his face.

“I’m so used to losing him in my nightmares,” Takashi mused. “I wonder what I’ll dream about, now.”

Shiro laid his head down next to Keith’s shoulder, trying to get comfortable on the limited mattress space. “Dream about growing old with him,” he suggested.

As Takashi settled in opposite Shiro, he reached over Keith’s softly snoring form to ruffle Shiro’s hair. “Don’t get my hopes too high, kid,” he said with a sleepy, contented sigh. “It’s enough for me if he grows old.”


	5. tar and glass

When the sky outside first started to lighten, before the sun had poked above the horizon to begin baking the city anew, Shiro and the others packed their things and left the gas station behind. It was dangerous to stay in one place for too long.

The street was busy with Seattlites taking advantage of the more reasonable early-morning temperatures, so Keith didn’t bother trying to hotwire a car, though he did eye a few as they meandered down the block. The last thing they needed was to make more enemies in this city. And there was too much surveillance on public transit, so Shiro let a bus pass them by and ignored a sign for the light rail. It was slower, but safer, to walk.

They trekked as far out of the neighborhood as they could manage before the sun got hot enough to force them indoors. Takashi guided them to a shabby roadside diner. It was ugly and dirty, and some of the customers looked so listless they might have been part of the furniture, but at least it had air conditioning. Best of all, it wasn’t nearly high-tech enough for cameras. Shiro hoped they’d be safe here for just long enough to get a fresh breakfast.

“I’ve been thinking,” Keith said as soon as their waiter was done taking their orders and had moved out of earshot. “There might be a way for all three of us to survive this.”

Takashi scoffed and shook his head as he tore open another sugar packet to add to his coffee. “Keeping me alive shouldn’t even be on your list of priorities,” he reminded Keith. “But okay, let’s hear it.”

Keith leaned back in the booth, leaving his coffee on the table to slowly cool, and said to Takashi, “When you were in your own timeline, in the future, your past was static. It had already happened, and you were the end result. I think as soon as you arrived here in the present, your past became dynamic. Your past is the future now, and we can change it, which also changes you.”

“Makes sense,” said Shiro, stirring his two sugars into his coffee. He glanced over at where Takashi was continuing to tear sugar packets open one by one and dump them into his ever-more-sludgy mug, and wondered whether there was a sugar shortage in the future. Or maybe Takashi was just nervous.

Keith went on, “Right now, you’re made up of probabilities. Like you said, with your memory - things become more or less clear as they become more or less likely. You’re changing physically, too, but not as much. I think the timeline is trying to stay stable. It’s keeping you as close as possible to the way you were when you first came through, and it’s only changing you when the future that made you that way is completely impossible.”

“You’re still thinking about what will happen if you erase the future where I get looped back,” said Takashi heavily.

“Maybe it’ll be okay,” said Shiro. “If the timeline wants to stay stable, then maybe you won’t change that much. It might just give you a new set of possible memories.”

Takashi rolled his eyes at Shiro’s optimism. “Or maybe my mind gets erased once all my memories become part of a dead-end timeline. Or maybe I drop dead, or maybe I disappear like I was never here. I’ve made my peace with that. If we make my future impossible, then I become impossible.”

“That’s what I’m saying,” Keith blurted out. “We don’t have to make it impossible! We’ve been talking about taking down the Syndicate, but we only really need to take down Haggar. If she’s dead, the Syndicate goes back to being an ordinary gang. We could let them go underground to lick their wounds and nurse their grudges. They’ll never take Shiro to send him back in time, but it’s technically possible that they could. Just a sliver of a chance. Enough space for Takashi to live in.”

Shiro’s eyes met Takashi’s across the table. Takashi winced and gestured with his coffee mug, clearly trying to think of a way to talk Keith out of his plan and looking to Shiro for backup. But Shiro wasn’t so sure. He allowed himself to imagine a future with the three of them together, and found that he didn’t hate the idea. Shouldn’t they try to save Takashi, if they could? Wasn’t that worth a measure of risk?

But Takashi was firm. “I knew my life was over the moment they put me in that machine. My purpose now is to get the best possible future for the two of you. It doesn’t make any sense to compromise that future for my sake.” He reached across the table and squeezed Keith’s hand. “You have to let me go.”

Keith stared back at him with a ferocity of love that told Shiro the argument was already over. “You two can’t pull this off without me. We do it my way, or I’m out.”

Their food arrived, stalling the conversation until their waiter left. Keith began making a stack of blueberry pancakes disappear at an alarming rate while Takashi glowered and oversalted his eggs.

Shiro stayed quiet long enough to let everyone get some food on their stomachs, hoping it would put them all in a better mood, before pointing out, “We’re getting ahead of ourselves. Before we decide exactly how we’re going to manage the aftermath of defeating Haggar, we need to figure out how we’re going to do it when no one else has ever come close.”

“She’s human,” said Takashi, pausing to take a sip of his coffee. He grimaced against the sweetness of it before shrugging and taking another gulp. “People think she’s a witch or worse, but she’s mortal. She can be outsmarted, or overpowered.”

“She’s TK,” said Keith. “So yeah, she’s human, but don’t underestimate her. There’s a reason she’s ruled Seattle for this long. Her TK is… different. She’s strong.”

Shiro scoffed. “Stronger than you?”

“I don’t know.”

They fell silent, contemplating the task ahead of them as they finished their food. Takashi finally sighed and said, “We’ll have to take our chances against her. The bigger problem is getting close to her in the first place. We need to get inside the tower.”

“Maybe we can sneak in if we disguise ourselves,” Shiro suggested. “She stays on the top floor, right? So we sneak up as far as we can…”

“And fight the rest of the way,” said Takashi, nodding.

Keith put his mug down hard enough to make the table tilt. “Climbing the tower is suicide,” he said.

Shiro tried to reassure him. “But if she’s not expecting it…”

“No, you don’t understand. There’s no sneaking in. There are guards at every entrance and gats at every checkpoint. I used to go there a couple of times a week to turn in my silver, and if I took one step away from where I had business the druids were on me. There’s biometrics on the elevators just to get them moving, and even if you hack them there are security cameras in every box. They watch the feeds, too. When they spot you, they’ll stop the lift between floors and trap you. If it looks like you might escape, they’ll drop you. They verify your identity at intervals on the way up, and no one but druids have access to the top ten floors. The stairs are worse. She’s made the most of putting her headquarters at the top of the tallest building in Seattle; there are seventy-six stories and if you started at the bottom she’d make you fight for every single one.”

Takashi chased the crumbs of his food around the plate, clearly demoralized. Keith sat hunched with his arms crossed, daring anyone to argue with him. Shiro trusted that Keith was right about their pathetic odds of climbing the tower. But…

“What if we didn’t start from the bottom?” said Shiro.

A slow smile spread across Takashi’s face until it was a beaming grin. Keith took a second longer to catch on. “Oh…” he said, his mouth falling open.

“Oh my God.”

* * *

Sunlight glinted off the roofs of the long, squat buildings set in their rows, and heat waves rose from the asphalt in between. Piles of junk clogged the foot paths, spilling out of doorways and shored up against the walls. The grounds of the storage complex looked deserted. But then, Keith had thought the same thing the last time he’d tried to sneak into the place, right before he’d ended up tossed in the back of a van.

“It’s been over a month since we were here,” said Shiro as they approached the gate. “Maybe Haggar isn’t watching this place anymore.”

Keith just pointed at the top of the fence. The hole he’d crawled through when this all started was gone, replaced with fresh razor wire. “She’s always watching. I’m sure the welcome wagon is waiting for us inside.”

The heavy iron gate sat on rolling tracks, held in place with an electronic lock. After shoving failed to budge it, even with the enhanced strength of his prosthetic, Shiro said, “How are we going to get in?”

“Too bad this thing doesn’t have any utility attachments,” said Takashi as he inspected his own arm. “Hey, I got it! You just have to promise me that, after this, you’ll go back to Pidge and make her add a blowtorch to your arm.”

Shiro looked taken aback, but said, “Um, sure?”

Nodding in satisfaction, Takashi poked at his own arm expectantly. When nothing happened, he sighed, “Aw, it didn’t work,” and looked at the others as if waiting for a reaction.

Keith and Shiro just stared.

“Come on!” said Takashi. “That was a good time travel joke!”

Keith leaned close to Shiro and whispered, loud enough that Takashi could hear too, “Promise me you won’t start telling dad jokes when you’re old.”

But Shiro was already shaking with suppressed laughter. “Oh, I’m not going to wait until I’m old,” he said.

Keith turned away from the pair and busied himself investigating the gate’s roller mechanism to hide his own smile. It was too sturdy to dislodge from the track, but Keith placed a hand on it and felt around inside until he found the lock. He couldn’t see it, as such, but he could sense the potential energy in the way the pieces fit together. He tweaked that energy to release it, and something clicked deep inside the door. This time, when Shiro pushed, it slid open easily.

True to Keith’s suspicions, a group of druids was waiting to ambush them on the other side, gats raised at the sight of their long-awaited quarry. Keith used his TK to lift a heavy length of pipe out of the gutter and fling it across their outstretched arms. As the druids scrambled to retrieve their fallen gats, Shiro and Takashi closed the distance and made quick work of the group.

They found two more druids in Shiro’s rented hangar on the other side of the complex, and these two didn’t see them coming. Takashi kicked the door in and took out the first druid with a well-placed shot from Pidge’s blunderbuss pistol. The second druid ran. Keith didn’t bother giving chase. He simply reached out his consciousness to the ceiling above, and tugged at the chain holding a heavy light fixture until it broke, plummeting toward the fleeing druid. She noticed it falling right before she was crushed, and Keith felt her TK spasm weakly as it failed to cushion the blow.

TK was getting easier for Keith. He could feel it strengthening like a muscle he was finally bothering to exercise. Ever since the day Haggar’s interest was piqued by his TK, Keith had tried not to use it as much. He didn’t want her attention. But now he was back with Shiro, who glowed with admiration whenever Keith showed off his power. Shiro loved him, and appreciated that TK was a part of him. Haggar just wanted his power for herself, and resented the boy it was attached to.

He had never thought about it that way before, but hearing how Allura and Pidge talked about it yesterday made sense to him. Haggar had seen his potential and collected him like rare doll. Well, whatever her plans had been for him, she surely could not have foreseen this.

Shiro closed the door behind them, alert for more druids outside. Keith looked around for Takashi and found him in the middle of the hangar, staring up at the plane that dominated most of the space. One side of the fuselage was a patchwork of salvaged metal with welded seams, but on the pilot’s side the Skyhawk’s original blue stripes laid over white paint were still visible. The sturdy body perched on spindly wheeled legs, and it wore its wings like a wide-brimmed hat. There was a certain charm and even a sense of humor to its shape. Takashi patted its nose with all the pride and warmth of a parent.

“Been a while?” Keith guessed.

“Yeah,” Takashi said wistfully. “It was a good little plane. Lasted us a year or so before it went down over the Great Lakes.”

Keith’s eyes widened. “That’s not very reassuring.”

“Wasn’t its fault,” said Takashi, running his hand down the hull fondly. “It did its best after Syndicate guns perforated the right wing and fuel tank. I hope it lasts you a lot longer, this time around.”

Shiro tossed their packs aboard the plane along with some supplies he’d scavenged from his workshop in the hangar’s corner. He’d taken a gat off one of the defeated druids, and he stashed it beside the pilot’s seat along with some scavenged ammo. “That’s everything. Ready to go?”

“Sure,” said Keith. “How are we going to take off?”

Shiro’s long silence told Keith all he needed to know: neither of them had thought this far ahead. In better times, they would have driven the plane to the airfield and used their runway, but filing a flight plan now would be lunacy. Any information they put through official channels would surely make its way back to Haggar.

Takashi winced and scratched the back of his head. “I can tell you how we did it last time,” he said, “but you’re not going to like it.”

* * *

“I don’t like this!” Shiro shouted through his teeth as another car whizzed by. They were in the middle of the interstate, the idling plane acting as a poor shelter against the traffic flowing around them like a river parting around a rock. Horns screamed as the cars went by. It wasn’t all that busy, not for this part of I-5, but there were enough vehicles on the road that they didn’t have a hope of a clear shot to take off.

Takashi curled himself tighter against the landing gear, trying to avoid the rush. He’d gone outside to try to direct the people to stop, but there was no reasoning with Seattle commuters. He shouted over the roar, “You know of a better makeshift runway? This is what we have to work with.”

“How did you manage it in your loop?” Keith asked, sitting in the open door of the plane.

“We waited until the traffic thinned out at night,” Takashi admitted.

“We’re here now, and we can’t wait that long,” Keith sighed. He leaned out to get a better look at the cars barreling up the road behind them. The sight of an airplane parked in the middle of the freeway was enough to get some of them to slow down, but indignation made them hit the gas even harder as they made their way around. Keith hopped down onto the pavement, telling the others, “Stay with the plane.”

“Keith, wait!” Shiro tried to grab him as he stepped into the right lane, but he wasn’t fast enough. Keith planted his feet in the path of an oncoming car and didn’t budge. A quick glance warned Takashi and Shiro to stay away. He knew what he was doing.

To Keith’s eyes and ears, the speeding car was light and color and sound, accelerating ever faster as the driver attempted to call his bluff. But to his TK, it was mass and velocity and combustion, just an assembly of atoms and forces that he could reach out and touch. He slid his consciousness into the engine and wrenched its inner workings, and its roar died with a high whine. The car kept rolling toward him, the driver too confused to brake. So Keith put his hands out and pushed the air around it, absorbing the last of its momentum before it could run him over. The car skidded and stopped with its hood just inches from Keith’s outstretched fingers.

Brakes squealed and horns blared as a line of cars backed up behind the one Keith had stopped. Ignoring their shouts and threats, Keith moved across the lanes to repeat the process again and again until there was a line of crippled vehicles blocking the entire interstate. The flowing river became a lake behind Keith’s mechanical dam, and the way ahead was clear.

“That’s one way to do it,” said Takashi, looking a little pale.

Keith returned to the plane, feeling lightheaded but energized. His powers were growing every time he used them, but he still had limits. Perhaps he’d overdone it a little.

He moved to pull himself up into the passenger seat, only to find Takashi already sitting there. He turned to Shiro in his pilot’s seat and complained, “It’s my first time flying and I have to sit in the back?”

Takashi shrugged apologetically. “Sorry, Keith. Gotta balance the load, and he and I the same size.”

Keith wasn’t happy, but that seemed reasonable. He clambered into the back row and chose the seat behind Shiro.

Both men in front of him, almost uncanny in their resemblance now that they were glowing with the anticipation of flight, turned around and winced apologetically. Shiro said, “Oh, if you sit there the plane’s going to tilt to the left the whole time. Can you move?”

Keith rolled his eyes and shifted to sit behind Takashi, only for him to say, “Now it’s going to tilt to the right.”

“There are only two seats!” Keith sputtered. “What do you want me to do?”

Shiro pointed to the narrow gap between the seats. “Could you kinda sit in the middle?”

Keith stared at the two of them, fuming, before shuffling over to awkwardly straddle the gap, holding himself in place by gripping the seat backs.

Shiro was the first to crack a smile. “Oh my god, he did it,” he chuckled.

“What?” Keith protested.

Takashi was laughing now, too. “It’s okay, baby,” he said. “You’re not heavy enough to make the plane tilt. You can sit where you want.”

Keith quickly hopped back into an actual seat and buckled himself in. As nice as it was to see the two of them getting along well enough to share a stupid joke, this was really not the time. “I just shut down half of I-5 for you dicks! Would you fly the damn plane?!”

“Yes, sir,” said Shiro, still smiling, and started the engine. The plane sputtered to life, the staccato chop of the propellor drowning out the angry car horns behind them. It revved up until, with a lurch, they began to roll forward. Faster and faster they went down the wide-open highway, jostling on every imperfection of the road and then, abruptly, the ride smoothed out as they lifted off.

They rose faster than Keith thought possible, fast enough to make his stomach sink and his head spin. I-5 fell away beneath them and the sky opened up above, spotty clouds breaking up the sun’s terrible heat. Keith leaned to look out the window and saw Seattle like never before - not stuck in the mud of it, but gazing down on its sprawl and peaks like a jewel set on the labyrinthine coastline. For once in his life, the city looked beautiful.

Keith took one last longing look at the horizon before turning back to the downtown skyline, seeking out the Columbia Center. He wasn’t done with this town quite yet.

Shiro nosed the plane higher, staying above the wispy clouds as they approached the tower. “I’ll get you as close as I can,” he told the others as they strapped on their parachutes. “Once you’re inside, I’ll circle the tower and try to keep an eye on you.”

Keith paused his final check of his harness to lean into the front seat and give Shiro a kiss. “You won’t be able to do anything from out here,” he said gently. “You should keep your distance.”

“I’ll stay close,” said Shiro, and pulled Keith forward for one last kiss before letting him go.

It had been a fight to get Shiro to agree to sit out the tower raid. Even if there had been more than two parachutes stashed in the hangar, which there weren’t, one of them needed to stay with the plane for their getaway. It couldn’t be Keith, since he didn’t know how to pilot Shiro’s homemade hodgepodge of an instrument panel. Takashi and Shiro had argued it out, but in the end Takashi had made a convincing case that Shiro’s younger, faster reflexes would make him a better pilot for the precise flying needed to drop two jumpers on the roof of a skyscraper.

Keith wasn’t blind to the other advantage of Shiro staying out of the tower: if Takashi died, Shiro would be fine, but no one was sure what would happen if it were the other way around. By volunteering for the raid, Takashi was trying to minimize casualties. Keith vowed to make that advantage a moot point. No one was going to die today, none but the Witch.

Shiro threaded the needle of altitude and speed, putting them high enough for their parachutes to open but low enough that they wouldn’t spend too much time in the air as easy targets, and pulling the plane up as slow as it would go without stalling out. When the column of the Columbia Center disappeared under its roof and the building became a single square among the weed garden of downtown, Shiro shouted, “Now!”

Keith didn’t give himself time to think about it before he jumped. The city accelerated toward him at a heart-shattering pace as wind whipped at him, trying to flip him around as he fell. He didn’t know the technique to keep from rolling, so he nudged his own body with TK until he was falling straight and stable. There was no time to enjoy the freefall; their low-altitude jump had given them a tiny margin for error. Keith pulled the cord on his parachute and felt a stomach-turning jolt as it caught the air and yanked him out of this fall.

He didn’t have time to catch his breath before something plummeted past him, twisting and flailing. It was Takashi, his tangled parachute trailing uselessly behind him. He was somersaulting through the air as he tried to untangle himself from the lines, but the flapping fabric behind him kept throwing him off-kilter.

Keith didn’t hesitate before yanking the release on his harness, detaching himself from his canopy to plummet once more.

This time he was ready for the drop, and even streamlined his body to go faster. He flailed as he caught up with Takashi, trying to catch him though they were both spinning dizzyingly. As soon as they caught hold of each other’s hands, Keith sank his consciousness into the fibers of each of the cables tethering Takashi to his useless parachute and severed them, sending them both back into freefall. “Hold on to me!” Keith shouted as he reached under Takashi’s arm and pulled his reserve chute.

Takashi cradled him securely even as the burst of the chute opening tried to tear them out of each other’s grasp. It unfurled correctly this time, soaking up the worst of their momentum, but it was too little and far too late. The roof was close enough now to see the texture on the surface of it, and they hurtled toward it at bone-shattering pace. Keith mentally yanked upwards on the two of them with the strength of blind panic, warping gravity and force and even the density of the air beneath them.

They slowed, just a little, just enough, and the welcome pain of the landing let Keith know he’d survived. He bounced across the roof, bruising ribs and scraping skin off knees and elbows, Takashi tumbling beside him, until they came to rest in two groaning heaps.

Shiro buzzed low to check on them, his panic evident in the speed of his looping turns. Keith raised one arm - the only movement he could manage - and waved to show him they were alive. He was battered and sore, but his injuries bothered him less than the wave of exhaustion that made him collapse again the moment he tried to sit up. Between the fight in the storage complex, his trick on the freeway, and now, he’d blown through the limits of his stamina and was paying the price.

“Are you okay?” Takashi asked as he limped to Keith’s side. He was hunched and grimacing, but he was upright, and Keith was relieved to see that he wasn’t seriously hurt.

“Yeah, just give me a second,” Keith groaned. Takashi knelt beside him, cursing in pain as he bent his legs, and Keith couldn’t help but add with a cheeky smile, “Did you break your hip, old man?”

Takashi laughed so hard he held his ribs and winced. “You’re incredible,” he said, his voice warm with admiration. He took Keith’s hand and carefully helped him to his feet.

The roof seemed to tilt and spin, and Keith clung to Takashi until he trusted his legs to hold him up. He was tired to the point of nausea, and felt that if he stopped focusing on staying awake for even a second he would soon be unconscious. But giving up was not an option anymore. They were here, and there was no way out but through.

Takashi scowled at his parachute, lying crumpled on the roof where he’d fallen. “So much for our escape plan,” he muttered. If all had gone well, they’d hoped to return to the roof and use their reserve chutes to make their getaway. Now there was only one left.

“We can still jump together,” said Keith as he wriggled out of his harness and stashed his own unused reserve chute in a crevice. It wasn’t ideal, but they could make it work.

Keith crossed the roof and made for an access hatch in the corner that he hoped would lead him inside the building. It was locked, and the thought of using his TK again made him queasy. Luckily, Takashi was there to pull the lock off with his metal hand and hoist the hatch open, revealing a small ladder that descended into darkness.

They entered into a small maintenance closet, which opened into a dark-paneled hallway. Keith didn’t recognize it, which wasn’t surprising given how rare it was for him to be invited so high up the tower. He would need to find one of the elevators, or at least a window, to get his bearings. Distant voices pulsed from every direction - in other corridors, behind closed doors, too numerous to pinpoint or avoid. Keith stepped out of the closet, feeling incredibly exposed as he led Takashi quietly down the hallway, trying to stay close to alcoves and corners in case they needed to hide.

Their progress was painfully slow as they crept and dodged their way through the halls. As soon as they made a little progress, the sound of approaching voices forced them to duck into an empty room and freeze for minutes at a time, or backtrack to a different route. Soon they were so turned around that Keith wasn’t sure whether he could even find their way back to the roof access, let alone to Haggar’s office. His nerves were on a hair trigger, ready at any second for a druid to suddenly open a door or come around a corner and spot them. They’d already been in here for longer than he’d hoped, and their luck couldn’t hold out for much longer.

They turned a corner and there, blessedly, were the gleaming metal elevator doors. They weren’t far now, and Keith knew the way. But his relief didn’t last long. With a loud ding, the elevator slid open and two druids stepped out, relaxed and chatting until they noticed Keith and Takashi standing paralyzed just feet away.

They had only seconds to act, while the druids tried to figure out what was happening, before they raised the alarm. Keith leaped at the one on the left like a wild animal, tackling him to the ground and covering his mouth so he couldn’t scream. The druid tried to angle his gat toward Keith’s head, but Keith ripped the gun out of his hand and struck him with the butt of the grip over and over until he stopped moving. He looked up to find Takashi lifting the second druid in a choke-hold, suspending him effortlessly until those dancing legs went still. Takashi laid the limp form gently on the ground, careful not to make a sound.

The background noise of the building didn’t change, so it seemed no one had noticed their quiet scuffle. The elevator dinged, doors closing, and Keith let out a sigh of relief as it began to descend. “That was close,” he mouthed silently.

Takashi didn’t answer, but his wide eyes said everything. He put one hand on Keith’s back to hurry him along before any more druids appeared, and Keith led him down the hallway facing the elevator in the direction he knew that obsidian office to be. Logically he knew Haggar was a living person and must leave that room sometimes, but it was the obvious first place to look. Besides, his one meeting with her all those years ago had left such an impression that he couldn’t imagine facing her anywhere else.

And as he neared the end of the corridor, he suddenly knew for a fact that she was there. His own TK was weak and flickering, but hers was an aura that washed the whole hallway in her glow. She warped the very fabric of reality around her, just by existing. Keith stopped in his tracks, feeling like a candle thrown into a bonfire. He couldn’t beat her. It wasn’t even close.

Before he could do or say anything, a shout from behind them made both Keith and Takashi whirl around. The druid Takashi had choked out was awake, leaning on the wall and aiming his gat. Keith was still too thrown by Haggar’s presence to react when he pulled the trigger.

Takashi slammed into Keith, knocking him out of the path of the bullet and sending them both to the ground. But the damage was done, and at the noise of the shout and the gunshot every doorway in the hall slammed open, druids pouring out, gats swinging about as they looked for a target. Keith suspected the only reason he and Takashi weren’t dead already was the element of surprise - no one expected intruders to get to this floor, and the druids didn’t immediately know what to do.

Keith tried to extend his awareness to all the enemies surrounding them, to knock them back or disable their weapons, but his power only pulsed weakly and made his head swim. He was too weak to defend himself, or Takashi. All that was left for them to do was wait and see who would be first to open fire. The druid from the elevator looked like he was lining up another shot.

“Hit the deck!” said a familiar voice, small and tinny like a muffled recording. Keith was still wondering where it had come from when everything went dark - every light bulb extinguished on the whole floor. The only thing Keith could see was a line of red dots, each where a door handle had been, as every electronic lock engaged at the same time. Keith felt Takashi’s heavy prosthetic loop around his shoulders and drag him to the ground just in time to avoid the bullets from the druids who were too panicky not to shoot down a darkened hallway. Screams broke out as they only hit their allies.

“Second door on the left,” said the voice, and this time Keith had the presence of mind to obey it rather than waste time wondering at its source. He and Takashi crept forward, using the druids’ confusion to their advantage, and as soon as they drew level with the door its pad beeped softly and the red light flashed green. Once safely on the other side, the door locked behind, leaving them in an empty conference room. Keith caught a glimpse of the cityscape outside before security shields trundled closed over the windows, whirring mechanically until they thunked into place and cut off the last of the light. Now the room was just as dark as the hallway they’d come from.

“Thanks,” Takashi panted. Keith squinted into the darkness, trying to see who he was talking to. His answer came when a tiny screen made of light blipped awake, suspended in space. Its glow illuminated its source - a tiny gap in Takashi’s arm. When Keith saw the face on the screen, he finally recognized the voice.

“Thank me later,” said Pidge. “We have work to do.”

* * *

From his vantage point in the sky, Shiro was near to losing his mind. It had been bad enough to see Keith and Takashi nearly fall to their deaths when the parachute failed, but now they’d been out of sight for over a quarter of an hour with no indication of whether they were safe or captured or dead. Shiro tried to keep calm as he circled the tower again and again, but the interior was too convoluted to hope to spot them from the windows. From out here, he probably wouldn’t even be able to tell if a fight had broken out. He was utterly useless until they re-emerged, if they re-emerged.

He was so frantically focused on the tower that when Pidge’s voice crackled to life beside him, bypassing the the plane’s noise to vibrate up his shoulder and into his ear, he jumped and almost yelled in shock.

“Would you keep it down?” said Pidge, sounding distracted. “I’m trying to concentrate. Give me a sec.”

“W-what?” Shiro stammered as he steadied the plane from his surprised jolt.

But Pidge was speaking rapid-fire directions - turns and landmarks and warnings that made no sense to Shiro - and he quickly realized she wasn’t talking to him. He tuned her out until he heard her say, “Hey, flyboy. You still listening?”

“I’m here.”

“I’ve got an update from inside: everyone’s okay. Things went a little bit to hell but I’m finding them a new route right now. Stay in the air, we might still need you.”

Her voice was coming from his prosthetic, and Shiro wasn’t sure if he should speak normally or if he should talk directly into his arm like a phone receiver. He kept his hands on the steering column, but dipped his head down to shout into his wrist, “How are we talking? And how do you know what’s going on inside?”

“Two questions, same answer!” said Pidge, her smugness audible even over the choppy connection. ”I put a communicator in your arm when I built it, and since Takashi is just you with an extra thirty years on him, he has the same arm and the same communicator! Boom.”

Shiro paused as he tried to wrap his head around that. “Wait, so did you put this stuff in my arm because it was already in Takashi’s? Or is it only in his arm because you put it in mine?”

“Now that’s a very interesting question!” said Pidge, the excitement in her voice making Shiro sorry he’d asked. “I don’t know! It was in Takashi’s arm when I opened it up to research, but by then I’d already decided to install mine, so who’s to say it wasn’t there before?”

They didn’t have time to debate this, and he knew Pidge would take any excuse to follow her tangent, so he did his best to get her back on track. “What went wrong in the tower?”

“Nothing much,” said Pidge with sarcasm dripping off her voice. “They just got spotted by every Syndicate operative in the whole building.”

Shiro’s blood ran cold. “Then the plan is shot. Are you talking to them? Tell them to go back to the roof!”

“Not so fast,” Pidge chuckled. “We’re not throwing in the towel just yet. Look down.”

It took Shiro a moment to understand what she was saying. His eyes had spent so long trained on the roof and on the highest floor, where he knew Keith was, that he’d practically forgotten the ground existed. He peered down at the base of the building now, and could hardly believe what he was seeing.

The streets below were clogged with people, roiling and amassing in waves, packed shoulder-to-shoulder as they crammed to fill the blocks around the tower. Cars, busses, caravans, even bicycles and carts all sat abandoned on the sidewalks, their occupants spilling out into the road as soon as they reached the edges of the mob. As Shiro turned to cross high above Fifth Avenue he looked up and down the street and found more people approaching from as far away as the eye could see, barreling down from the north and ignoring the one-way signs as they thundered up from the south, all converging on Haggar’s headquarters.

Windows opened on the third and fifth floors, Haggar’s people firing from above into the crowd. The people below ducked and pointed, their mouths open in screams Shiro was too far away to hear. As gats continued to fire from inside the building, a single gunshot answered from across the street. One Syndicate shooter collapsed, dangling dead in the open window. Two more fell before Shiro managed to pinpoint the sniper - a young man in a blue tank top crouched on the roof of City Hall beside a rifle as long as himself. As he reloaded, all the windows along that side of the tower hastily closed, and the crowd undulated as people leaped and cheered.

Emboldened by the show of force, those on the ground nearest the doors bravely surged forward only to shrink back as a volley of gunshots tore into the crowd from inside the lobby. A few people fell and were quickly dragged back from the front lines. But instead of losing their nerve, the remaining combatants regrouped and charged again, some of them holding detached car doors in front of them as shields. They looked about to breach the doors when the Syndicate troops fell back into the building, barricading the entrance against the onslaught.

The mob battered helplessly against the building until some signal made them pause and part like the tide. Shiro watched as a big man rushed through the gap, carrying some kind of contraption slung over his shoulders. He skidded to a halt just in front of the tower doors and took a knee, unfurling the bundle on his back to reveal a mortar almost big enough to be called a canon. It fired with a blast so loud even Shiro couldn’t miss it, and the barricade exploded in a shower of glass and twisted metal. Roaring in triumph, the rioters poured inside.

Seattle had gone to war.

“Who are they?” Shiro asked, breathless with wonder.

Pidge sounded smug when she answered, “Reinforcements. Haggar has an army. No sense in you guys taking her on without one of your own.”

Swooping lower for a better look, Shiro recognized the colors of at least four different gang factions, the flags of anarchist and socialist movements, the uniforms of doctors and nurses, and hundreds and hundreds of people wearing no sign of allegiance - ordinary folks showing up for their hometown.

Shiro spotted a flash of white, and looked to the doors again just in time to see a woman in pink body armor leading a phalanx into the tower. Though her face was covered by a gas mask, Allura was unmistakable with her white twists swaying behind her like a medusa. Mere minutes after she disappeared inside, windows started breaking on the second floor, then lights started flickering on the third as her platoon moved up the tower.

“Allura’s here!” said Shiro.

“So am I! Look left!” Shiro obeyed, and quickly spotted Pidge’s small frame clambering out of an SUV parked a block down Cherry Street; she climbed on top of the car and waved to Shiro, steadying the microphone on her headset with her free hand. Gesturing to the crowd around her, she said, “Look at this. This is every contact we have, mobilized. Every favor called in, every ounce of goodwill we’ve earned in this town used up to make this happen. I wouldn’t have missed it for anything.”

Shiro’s heart was near to bursting with gratitude. “I thought you weren’t ready to risk it all.”

“We weren’t. But you were, and we believed in you. Maybe the reason we built this coalition all these years was so we’d be here when you gave the call to action, whether we thought we were ready or not.”

“Thank you, Pidge.”

She didn’t waste any more time on sentiment. “We’ll divert attention to the lower floors. That should give your boys some extra time up there to do what they came for. I’ll keep an eye on them, too. As soon as Takashi got inside, his arm started acting as a wireless node for me to hack Haggar’s security system, so now I’m plugged into tower controls. If it’s electronic, it’s mine.”

It seemed everyone had their role to play. Only Shiro was stuck out here, watching the battle play out without being able to affect it. “What can I do?” he asked.

“Oh,” said Pidge, climbing down and disappearing back into her mobile operations center, “I’m sure you’ll think of something.”


	6. Home at last!

As he crept through the darkened complex, following the path Pidge had prepared for them, Takashi felt his heart pounding against his ribs, in his skull, and in his left side just above his hipbone where warmth and pain bloomed like a hot poker pressed to his skin. He concentrated on breathing slowly and evenly, trying to keep his heart from racing. The faster his pulse, the worse he’d bleed, and he had already soaked through his shirt and was starting to drip onto his shoes.

He peeked over his shoulder, his eyes having adjusted to the low light enough to spot Keith’s outline following him. Every glimpse made Takashi weak with relief. Seeing that gat pointed at Keith had taken him back to that terrible night years ago (years from now, never). He hadn’t been fast enough to save him then. This time, he was.

The bullet slamming into his side like a baseball bat had felt like triumph. Better him than Keith, after all. But as the wet stain spread on his clothes and his fingers started to go cold, fear crept up on him. Not for Keith or for Shiro but, for the first time since he arrived in the past, for himself. He’d been so prepared to die, welcoming it even, that he hadn’t noticed the spark of hope Keith’s insistence on saving him had ignited until it was in danger of being snuffed out. Takashi wanted to survive. He could still. So he controlled his breathing, willed his nerves to calm and his heart to slow, and kept a hand pressed to the throbbing hole in his side as he walked.

His pain must have showed in his gait though, because Keith put a hand on his elbow and whispered, “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” Takashi answered.

Keith’s hand slid down his forearm and touched his hand where it was clamped over the wound. He rubbed his fingers together, feeling the sticky slip of blood between them. “Are you shot?!” he hissed.

Takashi took another step forward and felt a stab of pain, not just in his side where the bullet had entered, but aching deep in the middle of his belly like someone had grabbed a fistful of his guts. There are no good gunshot wounds, but there are bad ones.

“Just a graze,” he lied.

“Let me see,” Keith begged, trying to steer Takashi to sit down against the wall.

Takashi shook him off. “You can’t see anything in this light, and there’s nothing we can do about it now anyway. Let’s keep moving.”

Grudgingly, Keith followed as Takashi limped toward the next door. The red light on its electronic lock flipped to green as they approached. There were a couple of druids down the hall, their voices coming closer, but a distant alarm blared and they rushed off in the other direction. Pidge still had their backs.

Takashi tapped at his own arm and muttered, “How much farther?”

Pidge’s voice was clear but quiet when she answered, “Take the door across the hall from you and hug the east wall. That’ll lead you to some offices and lab space. Check the vault door in the back.”

“That doesn’t sound like where Haggar is,” said Keith.

“Just a quick detour,” Pidge promised.

“We don’t have time for that!”

“It’s okay,” said Pidge, sounding maddeningly unconcerned. “Now that our little party has kicked off, most of the druids that were chasing you have gone downstairs. You have time.”

“No, we don’t,” Keith argued. “Takashi is injured. We need to finish this and get out.”

“Maybe something in this room will help!”

Takashi chimed in. “What makes you think this place is so important?”

“I can’t see it. I’ve got the whole building schematic in front of me, the entire security system, even the plumbing and wiring. But it’s like this room doesn’t exist, total black spot on the map. I only know it’s there because of the space it leaves, and because I can see the door on the cameras. They’re hiding something.”

“Of course they’re hiding something!” Keith snapped. “They’re a criminal organization!”

Pidge huffed, “This is different!”

“Keith,” said Takashi, putting a hand on his shoulder. “It could give us a chance to regroup before finding Haggar.”

That finally made Keith relent, and they followed Pidge’s directions to a little laboratory tucked so far into the building’s core that it was pitch dark inside. Glass beakers tinkled and computer keyboards clicked under Takashi’s fingers as he groped his way through the room, Keith beside him. At the back wall Takashi could feel the outline of a heavy, circular door and a boxy biometric scanner on the wall beside it. Pidge made short work of the scanner - its screen blipped on, faded to static, then flashed green as the mechanisms inside the door clunked their way to the unlocked position. But the door still wouldn’t budge, and in the glow of the scanner screen Takashi spotted a large keyhole near the door’s edge. “Can’t hack that,” said Pidge when he told her.

“Keith can,” said Takashi proudly.

Keith hesitated a moment before stepping forward and pressing his hands to the door. Shoulders hunched, knuckles bent, he strained to find and move the final bolt for far longer than it should have taken him. When a tiny whimper escaped him, Takashi almost told him to stop, but then they all heard a click and the door swung open.

Light flooded out from the doorway, harsh and dazzling after so long in the dark. Half-blinded, Takashi grabbed Keith and dove through, pulling the door closed behind them before any druids could spot the light. They both collapsed on the floor, panting and squinting, waiting to regain their breath and their vision.

Takashi met Keith’s eyes with spots still hovering with each blink, and they got their first good look at each other since the lights went off. Keith looked terrible - his face flushed and pained, his eyes barely focusing, struggling to lift himself off the floor. Takashi hadn’t realized how spent Keith was, but now he saw that opening this door had taken the last of his strength.

But, if Keith’s horrified expression was anything to go by, Takashi looked even worse. Glancing down to check the growing bloodstain, he found it had wicked into his pants and painted them red down to his knee. He couldn’t see his own face, but he could guess how pale he was by the ashen, clammy back of his hand.

Takashi almost laughed. They’d have trouble defeating a flight of stairs in their current state, let alone Haggar.

“What’s in there?” Pidge demanded, oblivious to their despair.

Takashi looked up to find himself in a surprisingly small room, more a closet than anything, and in the shadow of a machine that filled the space like a gem sitting in its box. It looked like one of those ancient diving bells - spherical, hollow, with a porthole in front just big enough for a person to clamber inside. Its outer casing was riddled with tubes, wires, and arterials bubbling with liquids. Pipes and sensors lined the walls, and lights blinked ominously on its surface. It crouched there like an armored creature, watching them.

“What is it?” said Keith.

The sound of Pidge’s furious typing was audible through the speaker in Takashi’s arm. “I don’t know.”

“I do,” said Takashi. “It’s the time machine.”

Keith stared at him, wide-eyed. Pidge’s typing stopped, and she said, “Can’t be.”

“I got a really good look at the thing before they stuffed me inside it,” Takashi insisted. “This is it, plus or minus a few bells and whistles.”

“It’s not going to exist for another thirty years…” Keith protested, dragging himself into a sitting position against a wall.

But as Takashi moved closer to the machine, scooting sideways with his back against the wall for support, he was more sure than ever. “It’s not as if time travel appeared out of thin air one day. It must have taken a long time to get it right. Someone researched it, developed it over decades before selling it to all the major crime syndicates. There had to be a prototype; we just never knew where, or who.” He reached out apprehensively and touched the surface of the orb. The metal was warm, and buzzed faintly beneath his fingers. “It was here the whole time,” he muttered.

Following Pidge’s directions, Takashi decoupled a wire from what seemed to be the master diagnostic sensor and plugged it into a small port in his arm. While Pidge excitedly dove into the schematics and readings for the thing, Takashi watched Keith slowly lean into the corner and close his eyes, unable to fight off sleep. He’d always looked so vulnerable when he slept, but never more than now. Takashi had spent a decent chunk of his life remembering Keith as a man just a little younger than himself, the memory aging alongside him as he grew old. Coming back to the past, it had been easy to forget that this Keith was not the Keith he’d built in his mind, but a child. Takashi should never have sent him into this tower.

He turned back to the machine and let his hand rest on it again, this time with the firmness of resolution. This was bigger than him, now. This machine represented not only his own fate, but that of the entire city, the country, maybe the world. It was the wellspring of the Syndicates’ dominion, feeding back on itself in endless loops. Takashi let the last shreds of his tenuous hope slip through his fingers as he accepted what he would have to do.

“Pidge,” he said, taking care not to wake Keith as he interrupted her fascinated, babbling monologue. “How do I destroy it?”

Pidge stopped mid-word and, after a momentary pause, said in a slightly shakier voice, “I was kind of hoping you’d ask that, and kind of hoping you wouldn’t. If destroying it means the invention of time travel is delayed, or never happens at all, that might make it impossible for you to have ever been looped back. You okay with that?”

“I’m planning on it,” said Takashi, smiling to keep the tears from overflowing.

“Okay. Then here’s what you do…”

The machine was already fragile and dangerous, its stability maintained by constant external corrections from the electrical and chemical inputs pumping through its body. It didn’t take much to modify it into a bomb. Pidge told Takashi which wires to jerry-rig together, which tubes to reconnect, and which failsafes to remove. The soft buzz of the machine became a jangly vibration, and its warm surface grew hot.

“What next?” said Takashi.

“That’s it,” Pidge finally said. “Now all you have to do it turn it on. It was already designed to poke around in space-time; with my modifications and all the safety measures turned off, booting it up should create a singularity.”

“Like a black hole?!”

“Just a little one, and just for a few nanoseconds! I’ve done the math, okay? It’ll definitely take out the top few floors of the building and not our entire solar system and life as we know it.”

Takashi didn’t have much of an option but to trust her. “Okay. Can you set it off after I get Keith out of here?”

“Nope. The ignition is analog, so I can’t touch it from here. You should be able to set it on a time delay, though. The lever under the porthole.”

Just as she said, Takashi found a numbered dial near the bottom of the machine. He set it to thirty minutes and rested his hand on the attached lever, taking a deep breath as he readied himself for the point of no return.

“What are you doing?” came a groggy voice from behind him.

Takashi turned to find Keith struggling to his feet, clawing his way out of sleep as he realized what he’d missed. Keith lunged with more strength than Takashi had thought was left in him, grabbing his hand before the lever could be pulled.

“It’s okay, Keith,” Takashi tried to explain. “You know this is how it has to be.”

Keith shook his head, his free hand ghosting over the timer dial and the twisted bird’s nest of wires, trying to figure out what Takashi had done and how to reverse it. “No, we have a plan. We can make it, all of us!”

“We didn’t know we were going to find this machine,” said Takashi gently. “This changes things. You know that. It was one thing when it was just about me, but we can’t let this technology keep existing when we know all the suffering it will cause.”

Keith’s face crumpled and he bowed his head. He knew Takashi was right, but still he hung on the lever to keep it from moving. “I can’t do it,” he sobbed. “I can’t let you do it.”

Takashi’s own impending doom was less painful than what he had to do next. “I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he said as he shoved Keith away from the machine, breaking his weak hold and sending him to the floor. “But you can’t stop me.”

The lever settled into position with a decisive clunk, and the timer began to tick.

“No!” Keith screamed, pulling himself off the floor and staggering toward the machine. Takashi caught him before he could reach it, holding him back in a tight embrace. “No, no, no!”

There was no point in reasoning with him now. All that mattered was saving his life. Takashi steered Keith’s arms behind his back and held his wrists together with one hand. Though Keith fought and shouted, he was too weak to resist. At least he fell silent as Takashi opened the vault door and wrestled him through it into the dim lab, though he didn’t stop struggling. Takashi walked behind him, forcing him forward away from the machine.

“Pidge, get us back to the roof,” he grunted. The problem of the parachutes was solved, at least. There was only one left up there, and now only one was needed. Takashi would put it on Keith and throw him off the roof if he had to, but he would make sure Keith got out of here alive.

“Y-yeah,” said Pidge. Though her voice was choked with emotion, she kept her instructions clear and professional as she guided Takashi back into the maze of darkened hallways.

Keith wriggled from side to side, threw his elbows around, and dug his heels in against their slow progress. Pain seared in Takashi’s side, and the persistent stream of blood from his wound gushed from the exertion of keeping Keith in check.

“You’re almost there,” said Pidge, but Takashi’s head was swimming and the hallway was closing in on him. He sank to one knee, dragging Keith down with him as he fell. It would pass, he told himself, he only needed a moment to rest. But as he knelt there his head only became lighter and his vision narrower. He tried to stand back up, but he was so weak, and Keith was so heavy.

Pidge was yelling a warning now, not bothering to be quiet, but Takashi couldn’t make out the words. He only managed to lift his head for a second, and the shadowy silhouette of a robed woman gliding unhurriedly down the hallway toward him was the last thing he saw.

* * *

Keith woke sore and confused, face-down on the floor. For a few seconds, he just laid there, overwhelmed by exhaustion and soothed by the cool, smooth tile against his feverish cheek. Only the memory of where he’d just been - the machine, the ticking timer, Haggar bearing down on them - gave him the jolt of clarity he needed to rise shakily to his hands and knees. His own reflection stared back at him from below, the floor a polished black mirror.

With a started gasp, Keith scrambled to his feet. He was in Haggar’s office, the otherworldly room looking just as it had all those years ago, and behind the desk sat the Witch herself. She watched Keith from over her steepled fingers. The muted sounds of battle could still be heard from far below, though Haggar seemed unfazed. It was as if this room existed outside the natural flow of space and time, thrown out of reality by the density of her power permeating the air.

It was hard to remember the machine was still counting down just a few rooms away. How long had he been unconscious? How much time was left?

“I knew it would be you at the bottom of all this,” said Haggar in a voice so measured it could almost be mistaken for calm. Only the harsh bite of each consonant gave away her simmering rage and triumph. “Though I wasn’t sure if he would be with you. That’s quite a bonus.”

Keith followed the nod of her head to find Takashi on the floor beside him, collapsed on his back and deathly still. His prosthetic was crushed, sparking wires exposed between the gaps in the cracked case. Only the slight flutter of his eyelids told Keith he was still alive. Keith glanced at the door, judging the distance and gauging his own strength. Haggar watched him realize how futile it would be to try to escape, and when he finally sagged in defeat and looked back at her she wore a faint smile.

The sound of an explosion drifted up from the street. Someone shouted from down the hall. In between the snaps of electricity coming from Takashi’s arm, Keith thought he heard Pidge’s voice sputtering unintelligibly through the interference. None of them could reach him here. He was alone.

He’d been sure, years ago, that he would die in this room. Turns out his only mistake was in believing he’d ever truly escaped.

“Why don’t you just kill us and get it over with?” Keith sighed.

Haggar gestured at Takashi where he lay, barely breathing. His wound oozed sluggishly as it ran out of reserves to bleed. “He’ll be dead soon enough,” she said. “But you. I never had any intention of killing you.”

She paused as though waiting for Keith to respond. When he just stared back defiantly, she sighed and went on, “It’s no secret I’ve cultivated people with telekinesis in my organization. Most of my druids have it, and most of them sought me out for the job. Telekinesis isn’t a particularly easy skill to turn into a trade, so there are always plenty of hard-luck cases grateful for my pay and protection. The looper contracts are a useful way to capture those less eager to join my ranks. As soon as I saw what you could do, even as an untrained child, I knew I had to have you.”

Haggar’s fascination was more terrifying than the prospect of death. Keith flinched as Haggar stood and slowly crossed the room toward him.

“In the future,” she said, “telekinetics are the power behind every world leader, every successful regime, every influential organization. I’m not talking about the weaklings floating quarters in bars; I’m talking about people like you and me.”

Haggar was standing over Keith now, her robe spread behind her like the feathers of a circling vulture. The sun was at her back, making her outline glow. A long-fingered hand reached down to brush Keith’s face, and her voice softened to become almost inviting as she said, “This is where you were always meant to be.”

A cloud rolled across the sun, casting the room in sudden shadow. Keith slapped Haggar’s hand away with a growl. “I know where I’m meant to be. You can go to hell.”

The tilt of Haggar’s head and her humorless smile were the only warnings Keith got before he was lifted off the floor and flung backwards, slamming into the wall hard enough to drive all the air from him. He tried to gasp, but the weight of Haggar’s power crushed his chest until he couldn’t so much as draw breath. This was power he hadn’t known existed. Somewhere deep inside himself, Keith had hoped the secret to Haggar’s legendary untouchability had been her influence, her money, her soldiers, her Syndicate. But now all those were stripped away, it was just the two of them, and Haggar was still more powerful than he could hope to touch.

At this moment, Keith was too weak to even float a quarter, but still he tried to resist her. It was like trying to plug up all the holes in a sieve. Power poured out of her, overflowing, and beat down on Keith like a waterfall. His bones seemed to creak, just this side of breaking. His lungs were on fire. He lashed out with what little strength he had, but Haggar wadded up his TK and stuffed it back inside the confines of his body until he couldn’t so much as twitch the dust motes in front of his face.

He was going to die. His oxygen-starved brain screamed it at him. All his hopes, his determination, the plans he’d made with Shiro, even Shiro himself fell away until all Keith was left with was pain and panic and anger at the unbearable unfairness of it. And from somewhere primal deep inside him, a new kind of power rose. It bubbled up like tar from overheated asphalt, lending him a desperate strength that was just enough to push back against the unrelenting torrent and steal a breath of air.

“That’s it!” said Haggar with a smile.

Keith could breathe now, but his body was still pinned like a bug against the wall. He flexed his newfound power, leaking tendrils of influence out from the holes in Haggar’s onslaught, flailing around the room in a futile attempt to escape. The heavy desk rocked back and forth and dozens of books flew from their shelves. He even tried to reach out toward Haggar herself, moving to strike her or stop her heart, but she just swatted his attack aside with a laugh. No matter how much power he dredged out of himself, he couldn’t overcome her.

“I’ve been searching for a gift like yours all my life, and it finally emerges in the form of a worthless, ungrateful, gutter rat,” said Haggar, still laughing. “I wasted so many years being gentle with you, trying to eke out some loyalty from you. I should have done it this way from the start. I’ll wring the true potential out of your pathetic body, and by the time you surpass me your broken mind will be incapable of rebellion. Then you’ll truly be mine. My very own Rainmaker.”

As Keith continued to push back, a blast of static from Takashi’s arm interrupted Haggar’s gloating and, quiet and distorted, Pidge’s voice crackled through, “-ming! Incoming!”

Keith didn’t understand what she was talking about until the roar of engines overcame the roar of blood in his ears and Shiro’s Cessna swept into view outside the giant wall of glass. It flew dangerously slow and incredibly close, so close that Keith could see the tenacity on Shiro’s face where he leaned out the open door, firing a gat over and over in the direction of the tower. Bullets plinked against the window, leaving little cracked spiderwebs that spread and overlapped until the glass exploded out of its frame.

Haggar spun to face the new threat, but the plane was already retreating, leaving a garden of shattered glass and the wind howling in the dizzying gap. The Witch was unharmed - it would have taken a miracle for one of those wild-shot bullets to have actually hit her - but she was just distracted enough for Keith to slip out of her hold and collapse onto the floor.

As Haggar’s TK filled the room, Keith’s skirted the edges of her control like wary prey, probing out gaps and expanding his awareness into the rest of the building. His mind’s eye snaked down halls and pooled in every nook and corner, passing through walls and even the few druids remaining on the upper level, until he found what he was looking for: the secret room and the time machine within.

He couldn’t see it, not like when he’d been standing in front of it. But looking at it this way, through the lens of TK, Keith understood it even more thoroughly. He sensed the potential energy in the machine, the same way he could feel the explosion of a gunshot before the trigger was pulled, or the velocity of a fall before a person jumped. Except this wasn’t mass and force; it was time and space, and the machine was a hammer poised to artlessly batter at the walls of reality.

The timer rolled steadily toward ignition. Keith couldn’t tell how many minutes remained on it, but he could feel the chain of mechanical events that it would soon set in motion. He could stop it. Or he could spin that dial to its limit, speeding along the destruction.

He hesitated, the ghostly hand of his TK resting on the machine, and opened his corporeal eyes. There was Haggar in the center of the room, hair and robe flying in the updraft of her power as it surged to its height. But unlike Keith, who had delved into the building, Haggar’s sphere of control was billowing outwards through windows and roof, reaching into the sky like an expanding net.

She was trying to bring down the plane.

Keith didn’t have to think. He spun the timer until it clicked.

The disruption the machine caused in the fabric of the universe as it started up was nauseating and unmistakable. Keith’s consciousness shrank away, and he released his control to shrink back into his body. Meanwhile, Haggar whirled as she finally noticed what Keith had done. The air around her seemed to shimmer with her rage and confusion.

Before she could lash out at him, Keith gathered what was left of his strength and lunged. Takashi was motionless now, unconscious, perhaps not even breathing, but Keith didn’t think about that as he grabbed him off the floor. “Come on, we have to jump!” he grunted as he dragged Takashi’s body through shards of glass, shuffling over to the blasted-out window.

Haggar’s rage was a maelstrom behind them, but she was nothing compared to the obliteration intensifying deeper in the building. The fresh air and the dizzying height made Keith’s ears ring as he approached the lip of the window, and he almost didn’t hear as Pidge’s voice broke through the interference once more, screaming, “...ive, d… dive!”

Keith leaped out the window, still clutching Takashi’s limp form with all his might. Even if both their fates were sealed, Keith didn’t have the heart to let him go.

* * *

“Shiro! Dive, dive, dive!”

Shiro plunged before he knew why, following the panicked directions screeching from the speaker in his arm. The plane’s nose was tilted toward the ground, accelerating, before he spotted the two human forms in the opening of the shattered window. As soon as he recognized Keith, time seemed to stop. Shiro’s mind raced faster than his engine, filling the space of microseconds with hours’ worth of panic as he watched them leap.

The two bodies fell, locked in an embrace, spinning together as they were buffeted by wind on their long way down the tower. At first they seemed so distant Shiro was sure he’d have no choice but to witness them fall to their deaths. But the plane was faster, and their small shapes quickly grew as Shiro caught up and passed alongside them.

Adrenaline continued to hold time at a crawling pace. Shiro couldn’t possibly have stayed level with them for more than a second, but somehow he managed to lock eyes with Keith through the open door, managed to see the shock on his face at the sight of the plane so close, managed to reach out his hand…

Keith reached out too, but they were still yards away from each other. Any overcorrection would have the aircraft hitting Keith like a truck on the highway, and Shiro didn’t have time for the fine maneuvering needed to ease up alongside him. They were so close, yet hurtling through the air at deadly speeds with no space for error, and their razor-thin window of opportunity was rapidly closing.

Just as Shiro thought Keith was about to slip away, the gap between them narrowed. Keith swung toward the plane, using TK to match their speeds and rotations, and reeling himself in with Takashi in tow. Even at a moment like this, running out of time as the ground sped upward toward them, Shiro marvelled at how Keith almost seemed to be flying.

Their hands touched, pulled, gripped tight. There was no time to get them inside. Shiro slammed the throttle with his knee while yanking back on the yoke, pulling out of the dive with so little time to spare that he half expected to feel the belly of his plane scrape the street below. Keith held on to Shiro with his right hand and Takashi with his left, stretched taut between them as he was whipped around the plane’s turn radius. Keith opened his mouth, but his screaming was lost in the roar of the straining engines and the rush of blood in Shiro’s ears.

As the plane gained altitude, passing the top floor of the Columbia Center once more on its way back to the sky, a sudden spasm of sound made Shiro shout in surprise and crane his neck to see. The tower was crumpling in on itself, as if the solid structure of glass and steel were being sucked through a straw and consumed. Beams shrieked and windows shattered as they twisted, folded, imploded, and disappeared.

When it was over, the air was still again, and the tower stood level with the neighboring buildings it once dwarfed. The upper stories had been scooped out of reality, leaving a bowl-shaped cross-section of the interior gaping open to the sky.

The Witch was gone. The army below continued to climb, rooting out the confused and demoralized remainder of her Syndicate. It was over. They’d won.

Shiro leveled the plane and hauled Keith inside, dragging him across his lap so they could work together to pull Takashi in after him. With some maneuvering, they managed to get both passengers into the co-pilot’s seat with Keith kneeling over Takashi, holding his slumped form upright. Pidge had warned Shiro that both of them would be in bad shape, but now Shiro saw how bad it actually was.

Takashi was motionless and gray from blood loss, the scar on his face stark against his pallor. He was already dead, or if he wasn’t, he couldn’t be saved. He was too far gone, and they were too far from help.

Shiro didn’t know how to explain that to Keith, who was wringing Takashi’s hand and stroking his face as he pleaded, “Hold on, please, hold on! We made it! We won! Please, I can still save you!”

It must have been some kind of miracle, but Takashi cracked open his eyes, smiling to see Keith safe in front of him. He lifted a single finger to point weakly at Shiro, and answered in a whisper, “You already did.”

Then he gasped, suddenly focusing on Keith’s face as if seeing him in a new light. “Oh!” he breathed, his smile growing wider and his eyes crinkling with joy. “I remember…”

And he was gone.

Not dead, but gone, vanished so seamlessly that Shiro didn’t even see him fade away. Even the bloodstains on Shiro’s lap and Keith’s shirt disappeared. Keith was left kneeling on the vacant seat, staring at the empty air where Takashi’s face had been.

Shiro soared higher, toward the thickening cloud cover, and let the noise and motion of the plane calm his racing heart and buzzing nerves. A wave of euphoria almost made him burst into laughter. It was as if Takashi’s final smile had become his own, and all the sadness he’d expected to feel was overwhelmed by the heady joy of freedom and triumph. A blessing from the beyond telling him to make the most of it.

But Keith, still motionless beside him, clearly didn’t feel the same. One hand hovered where it had been resting on Takashi’s chest, frozen as if waiting for him to come back. Shiro watched confusion war with sorrow on Keith’s face, as he tried to figure out how to grieve a person who had never existed.

How could he make Keith see that there was no need to grieve? That Takashi was not really gone.

He was still to come.

“Keith,” said Takashi Shirogane. “I’m right here.”

Keith, finally shaken out of his reverie, whirled and threw himself into Shiro’s arms. They embraced awkwardly while Shiro steered the plane out over the sound, both shaking with relief and intensity. Shiro lost track of time as the water rushed beneath them, but it was long enough for the tension to melt out of his chest and the adrenaline to stop pounding in his ears before Keith climbed out of Shiro’s lap and buckled himself into the vacant seat beside him.

The clouds came together to form a dark, rippling blanket over the city, the long summer finally broken by cool winds rolling inland off the Pacific. Orange light blazed over the ocean as the sun sank below the clouds on its way toward the horizon. And as Shiro pulled Keith closer for a victorious kiss, the first raindrops began to fall.

Wind whipped the rain through the open cockpit door, droplets clinging to Keith’s hair and eyelashes. He tried to say something, but it just came out as a hoarse croak as tears began to cut through the raindrops beading on his cheeks.

“What is it?” Shiro coaxed.

Keith cleared his throat and said in a small but hopeful voice, “What do you think he remembered?”

Shiro reached across and took Keith’s hand. “The life we’re going to have together.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to the [Sheith Big Bang](https://twitter.com/SheithBigBang) for inspiring me to take on the challenge of writing this fic. 
> 
> A huge thanks to [Hazel](https://twitter.com/hazeleks), my wonderful artist who took my mental images to a whole new level. 
> 
> A very loving thanks to [Coppi](https://twitter.com/wicoppi) for her beta work. This would not be nearly the fic it is without her input and encouragement. 
> 
> Fic and chapter titles from _Angela_ by The Lumineers.


End file.
